Current timelines for VA Prescriptions mailed to Veterans and Family Members take too long for delivery, and your refills are based on the shipment date NOT the date delivered to the Veterans. This causes the refill times to exceed the amount of time between the doses. Current renewal times are 10 to 14 days via USPS. But what triggers your next refill is based on when it shipped not when you receive your refill. These arrivals extend past the date that your prescriptions run out and you can't reorder earlier because of the mailing delays. Now, USPS has extended the amount of time it will take for First Class Mail to reach the package destination.

Changes are needed immediately for the Pharmacy to reorder and fill your prescriptions earlier so that prescriptions ARRIVE before the Veteran runs out of medication. This may mean that the VA needs to find a better solution for processing and filling prescriptions AND possibly decide on using FedEx or UPS, both of which have similar shipping times and are faster than USPS, in addition to making policy and procedure changes at the Pharmacies. Medications come from several different locations, and this means that some are local and others are centralized warehouses throughout the US, which adds to the confusion on shipping dates and delivery dates.

Additionally, we are being required to split larger doses, some smaller pills i.e. 5mg, in order to save money. But, these split pills are not the same amount dosed as recommended, even using the supplied pill-splitter. I can actually see the difference in the sizes, not counting all of the residual medication that is left behind in the splitter.

Is the savings worth that much? Is it worth the loss of medication over time and the incorrect dosage eventually not being ingested as prescribed?