Please share this video. I'm begging for help. On the coldest and hottest days of the year, I think about the many patients forced to mail order pharmacies. I want to save lives by warning other parents and patients about this issue.
The last week has been brutal for many patients forced to mail order pharmacies. Sadly, delays were already an issue before the snowstorm covered much of the United States in snow and below-freezing temperatures. During the delays, most medications were stored in only a bag in freezing temperatures.
Would a foam cooler even protect medications in temperatures in the single digits? I decided to experiment by putting liquid oral children’s medications and bottled water in a foam cooler used for medications from one of the largest mail order pharmacies. Within 12 hours, the medications and bottled water placed inside the foam cooler were frozen.
When patients’ conditions worsen as medications are stored outside of proven safe temperature ranges for long periods, few will know that the worsening condition could be from improper temperature storage. Even some room-temperature medications should not freeze.
Some have experienced medication delays in Chicago for over a month, one patient states, “I have eye drops that need to go in the refrigerator if they deliver it late, my eye drops no good – they burn my eyes,” said Joann Coleman. “That’s how I know.”
When patients are forced to mail order pharmacy, they are not told that they will be a guinea pig of a loosely regulated pharmacy where temperatures of medications, interruptions in treatments, and delays would go without consequences for the mail order pharmacy and the delivery service. Only the patients pay the ultimate consequence with pain and suffering when conditions worsen. The FDA and the State Boards of Pharmacy don’t regulate mail order pharmacies in relation to delays and proper temperature storage.
Once, a State Board of Pharmacy director said that she wanted me to prove that the extreme temperatures ruined my son’s medications. His liver transplant rejection after medications were shipped in hot trucks that have been shown to reach 150 degrees in the summer wasn’t enough evidence for her. The FDA, the drug manufacturer, telling me to discard his medications after being exposed to temperature extremes was not enough. Her words were enough for me to know that State Boards are purposefully ignoring the risk to patients' lives.
Isn’t it backward that a patient or caregiver should have to prove with their lives that medications are less potent or toxic after exposure to extreme temperatures? Shouldn’t the mail order pharmacies, drug manufacturers, and State Boards of Pharmacy prove to the patients that our medications are safe to take after being exposed to extreme temperatures? They know as long as medicines' temperatures are not adequately tracked after being stored in freezing and hot enclosed 150-degree trucks and mailboxes that our lives are at risk. The State Boards of Pharmacy's conflict of interest to corporate mail order pharmacies and pharmacy benefit managers blinds their own consciousness and prohibits their ability to protect patients. Common sense tells most not to put a child’s life-saving medication in below-freezing temperatures or in a hot enclosed truck.
Please continue contacting your legislators and demand safe options to local pharmacies, prioritized delivery, and safe medication handling.
Never give up hope. We will win this commonsense issue and expose those who refuse to put patients above profits.
Thank you,
Loretta Boesing
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Share Your Mail order Pharmacy Story or Concerns: loretta@uniteforsafemeds.com
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