Wegmans Pharmacy has instituted a new policy banning patients from receiving manufacturer specific generic medications, despite medical necessity.

Not all generics are created equal. The methods for mixing medication ingredients, the fillers used, and other factors impact not only potency, but the way in which a particular patient's body absorbs the medication.

Many conditions such as Autoimmune Atrophic Gastritis can cause problems with certain medications not being processed correctly by the body. This results in a lower dose or no dose at all for patients in these circumstances. The effect of that can be fatal.  

Because of this, it is extremely important for patients to be able to request specific manufacturers of their generic medications that work for them. Going to the pharmacy and having the manufacturer constantly changed by that pharmacy away from what your body requires is not just an inconvenience, it is patient harm plain and simple. It is participating in the derailment of a patient's care, establishing yet another roadblock for people with complex care needs.

 When a patient gets medications that don't work for them, they have increased psychiatric symptoms, are at risk of going through severe withdrawal, suddenly have heart conditions untreated, and a plethora of other severe complications that arise.

Wegmans Pharmacy has decided that patients can no longer have manufacturer specific requests for generics. Many patients are being harmed by this. Even 1 patient being harmed is too many. I am calling out Wegmans for their anti patient, tone deaf, and altogether abhorrent treatment of complex care patients, leaving them high and dry to suffer, without resources, without an alternative, and making it so that they can't just go to their trusted pharmacists at their local pharmacy anymore. I am lucky I knew to go to the Hospital pharmacy instead. Others aren't that lucky. They don't know what to do now. I have never seen a pharmacy act in such a horrific manner towards the patients they are supposed to be serving and caring for.

Patients have enough trouble getting their medications because of Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs). They don't need their pharmacy itself contributing to a lack of appropriate care and access to important life saving, sustaining, and improving medications. Shame on Wegmans. Reverse this decision NOW. 

 

Please share this petition and let's make some important changes. Patient lives count on us taking action.   

 

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