A federal program will allow the Wood County Health Department to expand its discounted prescription drugs program.
At the Dec. 29 special health board meeting, members approved a three-year contract with Nuvem that will expand the Community Health Center’s participation in the Section 340B of the Public Health Service Act, which allows people who are uninsured or underinsured to receive discounted drugs.
The health center participates in the 340B program, but currently we receive those discounts only when prescriptions are filled in our in-house pharmacy, according to Beth Peery, public health information manager for the health department.
The 340B program allows certain entities, including health centers, to purchase pharmaceuticals at a greatly discounted rate, explained interim Community Health Center Director Jerry Landers at the December regular board meeting.
Patients who have their prescriptions filled at the health center’s pharmacy can benefit from these savings, he said.
He said the health center’s pharmacy fills about 4,000 discounted scripts each year that benefit eligible patients.
The potential for earnings will come from prescriptions filled at other pharmacies.
Funds will come from the difference pharmacies would otherwise have to pay to purchase the drugs and those savings are returned to us, said health department Commissioner Ben Robison.
Landers estimated earnings could reach $55,000-$65,000 per year.
Pharmacies at Walmart in Bowling Green and Great Scot in North Baltimore have been added to the 304B program. Nuvem will be the third-party administrator.
“By contracting with other pharmacies, we can receive a benefit on the prescriptions our patients choose to have filled elsewhere. So the arrangement with Nuvem allows us to capture that benefit in more locations, which we can then use to better serve our patients in a variety of ways, such as expanding to other locations or offering new services,” Peery said.
There is no net cost of the program, Landers said, and there is no minimum requirement for prescriptions.
The terms of the contract include payment of either 12.6% of realized revenue or $2,000 per month, whichever is greater, according to
He said the pharmacy fills around 35% of the prescriptions issued there and most are for generic medicines.
“This doesn’t change the population that we serve,” Landers said. “We’re still writing the scripts, it’s just where those scripts will be filled.”
“When pharmaceuticals are less expensive, patients are more likely to acquire them, and the patients that we serve often have limited resources,” Robison explained after the board approved the contracts at the Dec. 29 meeting. “We want people to get those medications so that they’re treating something while it is still a cough and not pneumonia that requires hospitalization.”
The earnings will be reinvested into the services that we provide, he added.
“We are really designed to intentionally operate at a loss,” he said, explaining that services are provided even for those who can’t pay for care.
“All of this allows us to provide affordable care and to expand the population that we are serving,” he said.
