Please read the attached news article. After a life-threatening delay and misrouting of medications, a patient is told by the mail-order pharmacy, “We mailed it on Saturday and once it leaves our place it's no longer our concern." "It's between you and the carrier."
The carrier states, “You would want us to stop all postal operations in the Portland area so that we can make a special delivery of your special package?"
These were medications for a kidney transplant patient whose life depends on these medications every 12 hours.
When we pick up medications up from the same location the medication is filled, pharmacists must adhere to proper temperature storage conditions and the risk of this issue of misrouting of medications is 100% eliminated. Patients should not be forced to take the unnecessary risk for their life-saving medications.
The loosely regulated mail-order pharmacy ensures that if a patient’s life is harmed that determining who has the liability and obligation to ensure that the package is delivered safely and on time and without delay is not easily defined. Sadly, some blame the patient who has been forced to only use mail-order pharmacy by the same insurance company or PBM that forces us to their owned mail-order pharmacy as it is their only option of coverage.
Patients and lawyers have found it difficult to determine who is liable. The mail carriers are unaware that the package that they are handling may be delicate life-saving medications. The PBMs such as CVS Caremark, Optum RX, and Express Scripts who often force us to their owned mail-order pharmacy for coverage of most medications are aware.
In my opinion, we must have laws that hold the PBMs and mail-order pharmacy responsible for every delay, mishandling of medication, theft, improper temperature storage, HIPAA violations when medications are delivered and opened when shipped to the wrong address, and we must stop them from making us take unnecessary risk with our life-saving medications. The delivery services should be made aware that they are holding life in their hands as they deliver medications and these packages must be handled with utmost integrity and care over other packages. They should also be held to a higher standard.
No one should be forced to risk their lives with forced mail-order pharmacy.
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DIR Fees (Direct and indirect remuneration) are fees that are collected by PBMs that have increased by 45,000% since 2010. No business should be able to enact such a fee on their own competition. In addition to PBMs forcing patients to their mail-order pharmacy and reimbursing their competitor's pharmacy much lower than their owned PBM mail-order pharmacy, these fees charged by are threatening the existence of many of our trusted pharmacies. Please send a letter to your legislators and tell them to fix DIR fees.
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