Roughly six months from a projected rollout, Pennsylvania's medical marijuana program continues to negotiate glitches and snags that threaten to slow down the potential for thousands of patients to secure long-awaited medications.

The latest bump came Monday when the state Office of Open Records ostensibly reprimanded the overseeing agency - the Department of Health - for failing to do its job. Open Records said the department failed to "act in good faith" in its handling of the application procedure, which resulted in large portions of applications being redacted, seemingly arbitrarily.

That order comes amid the 148 applicants - made up of growers, processors and dispensers - that have submitted administrative action against the department challenging its decision to deny them a permit to operate within the nascent medical marijuana industry in Pennsylvania.

Health Department spokeswoman April Hutcheson says that volume - 148 out of approximately 400 applicants - should in no way impact the forward momentum of the program.

"Everything is proceeding according to our timeline," she said Tuesday. "We are still moving forward with developing patient regulations, a patient registry, doctors are still going ahead and taking continuing education and dispensaries and growers are moving forward with becoming operational within a six-month period."

There's the potential, however, for some of those administrative cases to end up in Commonwealth Court, undoubtedly bogging down the process. Even the decision by the Office of Open Records, which has no legal authority over the department, could hit a reset button and delay the state from entering the $6.7 billion nationwide industry.

Terry Mutchler, the former director of Open Records, explains that while the general consensus is that the department has done an adequate job establishing the permit process, it blundered the task to ensure its transparency. The situation, she said, could end up being a good study for all state agencies and third parties who are regulated by the state.

"They were responsible to ensure all applicants understood what the rules of the game were in terms of submission," Mutchler said Wednesday.

Open Records ruled that the department had failed to demonstrate whether the information on publicly released applications for medical marijuana permits was incorrectly redacted.

"I think the big long lessons list here will be that when you submit for records from the Commonwealth, you have to presume the records are public," Mutchler said. "That's what the law says. That's not to say every record should be made available but by definition those that are public are going to be public. I think the process could have been clearer at the beginning."

The process had already garnered scrutiny.

Last month, the Office of Open Records ordered the department to disclose the names of panelists who scored medical marijuana permit applications. The action came in the wake of a Right to Know request filed by PennLive seeking information on the members of the secret panel that scored applications for medical marijuana permits. That panel selected the 12 grower/processor and 27 dispensary permits to be awarded those permits.

The state hasn't decided whether to appeal that decision to Commonwealth Court.

Among the latest concerns raised is the fact that the Department of Health gave applicants a first-go at redacting applications based on their determination of proprietary information. As a result, scores of applications - which cost $10,000 to file - fail to provide even most basic information such as company names and financing.

PennLive and other news organizations have challenged the redactions of a limited number of applications in order to force greater transparency.

Erica McBride, a member of the Keystone Cannabis Coalition, said she hears reports of applicants submitting identical applications in different regions of the state but being scored markedly differently.

The majority of permit winners are cannabis powerhouses from outside Pennsylvania.

"Those were all things that we would not have liked to have seen happen," McBride said. "What everybody has to understand is that this program is for the patients. They've been waiting a long time to get their medications."

Open Records has given the Department of Health seven days in which to outline a timetable by which it undertakes determining what is public record and what is not.

Hutcheson said the Department of Health is reviewing the order from Open Records and determining what the office needs from them to make a determination.

"It's not a final decision," she said. "They basically said we need more information before we make a ruling."

Of course the possibility of a wild card always exists: The Department of Health may not agree with Open Records; as well, one of the applicants could step up and challenge the process, prompting a possible halt to it.

That, say medical marijuana advocates, sets up a potential travesty in all this: a delay in patients getting medication.

"I do think the Department of Health has some culpability in the fact that their process was not transparent," McBride said. "The scoring mechanisms for the applications did not make sense. There were a lot of issues but the problem is that it's going to be the patient that's going to get stuck in that. That's what none of us advocates want to see happen."

Mutchler points out that even Keystone state residents who have no vested interest in the medical marijuana program should be take note of the latest developments in the program roll-out.

She said residents should be concerned with who the applicants are and what the applications look like.

"It's important because taxpayers should get to know how their tax dollars were spent," Mutchler said. "The average citizen wants to know if a dispensary goes down their street . . . what exactly did they submit as part of this . . . what did the Department of Health review. It's like anything - on the one hand the world is not going to stop because of this decision, but when you are talking about transparency in government it's an important decision by the Office of Open Records."