The patient's mother states, “I don’t know if she’s going to pull out of this; I don’t know if she’s going to be a vegetable.”
This news report doesn't say if the patient was forced to mail order, but does highlight the risk to forced mail-order pharmacy and the need to improve medication delivery.
When medications are currently shipped by mail, most are treated like the average everyday piece of mail instead of being treated as critical, life-saving prescription drugs.
Epilepsy is a seizure disorder. Each seizure can cause brain damage that a patient may never fully recover from. Medication delays and interruptions in treatment can increase seizure activity, which is what happened after this woman's daughter was left without medications for a week.
Millions of medication delays have occurred across our country in the past year. As many are forced to mail as the only option of coverage, patients suffer, our children suffer, but the insurance companies, their pharmacy benefit managers, delivery services, and mail order pharmacies rake in the profit without consequences to the harm inflicted upon our lives.
Unfortunately, mail-order pharmacies are often awarded with patient compliance and adherence as medications ship out their door; however, mail order pharmacies fail to hold themselves accountable for the delays, interruptions in treatment, and the lack of upholding the integrity of medications as most are shipped in only bags outside of the manufacturer's suggested temperature storage guidelines.
Pharmaceutical Care Management Association (PCMA) is the association for pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) that have merged with mail-order pharmacies such as Optum RX, CVS Caremark, and Express Scripts. To our employers and during legislative hearings to our legislators, PCMA and PBMs often brag about their high adherence rates.
PCMA and PBMs claim that only a small percentage of patients experience these issues as if the millions of lives risked can just be viewed as a little and meaningless number on a piece of paper.
Every time that I hear this, I cringe. I want to scream directly to PCMA, the PBMs, the employers, and to the legislators that millions may be a small percentage to PCMA and PBMs. Still, millions of lives are the ACTUAL sum of human lives being risked for profits, and millions of people is not a small number. One delay can mean that a patient's life is on the line, or their condition can worsen to the point that they may never recover. No one should be forced to take that risk.
I hope with the millions of delays reported in the last year and the excellent reporting by NBC about the lack of regulation of temperatures that our legislators will see that patients are being forced to play a risky game of life or death.
America must do better. Many local pharmacies offer free and safe delivery in temperature-controlled vehicles. It's time that patients have the safest options. It's time to improve medication handling. It's time to stop allowing patients to be used as a siphon for the profits of the insurance companies, pharmacy benefit managers, and mail-order pharmacies.
Thank you,
Loretta Boesing
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