I think this depends on state law and where you practice; however, the whole point is it's against the law (as well as unsafe) for patients to take expired meds. For most drugs, the expired date is the last date of the month stated on the manufacturer's bottle.
And yes, I know this is sometimes total BS (as others have said) for loonie people who want to make a big deal out of nothing to sue and to hurt good practitioners. I had a talk with my staffs regarding this issue before because there are always patients (and we have several of them here) who demand manufacturer's bottles and not the amber vials that you usually put the pills in. Most of these people belong to these categories: (a) old patients who are extremely meticulous about their meds and want the same looking things; (b) old people or people who remember their meds by shape/color/bottle; (c) patients with legitimate medical OCD or Psych disorders with special needs; (e) plain straight crazy and whining people who complain about everything even their own body odor (yes, I have had a couple of menopausal women who fall into this category, believe it or not!)
-To protect your practice, the computer system should have a fixed-in function of matching the expiration date of the stock bottle and the max allowable expiration date from your state board and choosing whichever comes first. This happens when your techs scan in the bottle before they fill and then again when I check it (for my system, there's a place where I can see the infos on the bottle the tech scan in and its expiration date, then I look at the date the Rx was written and compare these two dates one more time)
-Of course, your inventory with the 6-month BUD should be checked often by your staffs; since your whole drug seller may also have their own policy on returns
-Keep in mind that the expiration dates may be different for other products: reconstituted antibiotics for kids, injections (insulin, hormone, etc.) once brought to room temp, special meds (Pradaxa, Xalatan generic, etc. ) once bottles are open, and of course the usual NTG etc. For these, you just have to manual check and do it yourself to ensure accuracy.
-At my other practice where I take care of LTC patients, meds are packed in blister paks and unit-dose: these follow a different set of rules; one of which requires the techs to write the expiration date and the lot# of the stock bottle onto the paks.
-You should have a process or at least a protocol on how your staff respond to patients when this kind of problem happens, just to cover yourself and your license cause you never know: people will say "oh, this expired med made me vomit and then I had to see my stomach doctor. I will sue you for pain and suffering" etc. I've heard quite a few of these in the past.
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Manufacturer bottle vs pharmacy RX label expiration date
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