How Safe Are Drugs by Mail?

Millions of American citizens these days receive their drugs by mail. It has proven to be a great assistance to those with mobility issues, mental ill health and those who may live in more remote locations.

Where for many, such a service has been a huge aid throughout the times they have needed medication, for others it has been a huge cause for concern.

Being forced into a change they did not ask for by their insurance policy left many people with little room for manoeuvre.

Patients were being left with a choice, that wasn’t really a choice at all. Continue to collect your drugs from your pharmacy, at huge cost and lose your cover, or have them delivered at a much cheaper rate via a mail order pharmacy. Many obviously chose the cheaper option, in some cases that decision is what kept a roof over their head. So expensive were the in-pharmacy pick-ups becoming that it just was not sustainable to keep doing it that way anymore.

So why are people not liking the change and why is it being enforced by insurance providers and pharma companies?

Read on to find out.

Why are mail order pharmacies letting people down?

Put simply, medication is a necessity for some people. Without it, they may die. Mail order should therefore be a great way to reduce risk and increase compliance. Except, it seems to be only the compliance that is often followed. And even that is only followed by the patient complying with the regimen specified by their doctor and complying with the demand of their insurance provider.

Where patients are finding more money in their pockets, they are often finding insufficient processes carried out by the mail order pharmacies. This results in medicines being delivered in insufficient packaging, medicines being stored in unsafe conditions or medicines that are of a questionable quality.

Many patients have voiced concerns over receiving medicines that are too hot, too cold, and damaged. In a word- unusable. The cash saving imposed on them by the pharmacy now comes at a much bigger cost. One that money in the bank can’t accommodate for. The cost to their health.

Alongside the improper storage practices there are also concerns with delivery issues themselves. When you have an order from Amazon arriving and you are told it is arriving between 12pm-8pm. You can live with that. With medication, you cannot. Many people are being given delivery timescales that do not match patient needs or lifestyles. The simple yet effective method of route optimization for pharmacy delivery is somehow, forgotten. Furthermore, when issues arise, having them rectified is becoming even more of a challenge. Hours spent trying to get a delivery issue resolved have led to many people going without medicine.

These medicines being delivered and stored incorrectly could make a patient sicker, and the patient, perhaps thinking it is just an effect of the illness they are enduring continues to have their medication delivered. They continue to fall more ill, or don’t recover when they should have. Unfortunately, we can’t prove an already consumed medication has led to this prolonged illness or adverse symptoms. There is a justifiable cause for concern here though right?

In addition, this is a market that at the moment, has very little, if any regulation and pretty much zero enforcement. Making it possible for multiple businesses to spring up and take a share of the billions of dollars the sector generates every year.

Why are insurance companies pushing people towards home delivery prescriptions?

This is where for many patients, and those in the pharmaceutical trade see that questions need to be asked and answers need to be given.

With the news that the FTC inquiry may be able to provide those answers. Many of us await the full disclosure. For the time being though, let’s look at why would an insurance provider that previously allowed you to collect medication from your pharmacy, now give you two options. Have your cover canceled-meaning you will have to pay full price out of your own pocket if you visit the pharmacy or take the home delivery option via their chosen provider.

At first, you may think this is great news, cheaper, delivered to the door. Simple! Let us refer you to a story covered by NBC. At 2 weeks old, a young girl was diagnosed with an illness. She was put onto life saving medication. It worked and began to make her better. Once the young girl had reached 8 years old, the health insurance provider told her parents that her medication may only be provided by a certain mail order pharmacy. Not the specialist pharmacy that had been sending them before. With no other option, they agreed, the medication began to arrive in thin cardboard boxes, not the insulated packaging the medication required. In addition, the family was never notified of the arrival of the medicine. Meaning if at work or school, it was sitting on a doorstep in the blazing sun. Losing its medicinal qualities, perhaps becoming totally inefficient.

After a while, the young girl fell very ill. An unrelated visit to the hospital, saw doctors notice the problem and after a review, the family received an exception and could begin collecting the medication from a local pharmacy. She began to make a recovery soon enough and whilst still taking the medicine, there has been no repeat of the previous issue.

It would be wrong of us to say that the practices of the mail order pharmacy were 100% to blame in this instance. But where medicines state certain storage requirements are necessary but not met, it certainly lends itself to being in some part, the fault of the delivering company. This is why RxMile emphasises how much proof of delivery matters.

So how are the insurance companies and mail order pharmacies linked?

Delving beneath the surface, we can see that the two are interlinked. Using PBMs (pharmacy benefit managers) to help drive price, availability and access to medications has meant that several pockets are lined if those operating the insurance policies, those supplying the medication and those authorizing the distribution of medicines are working together.

The soon-to-be-launched FTC inquiry will see PBMs investigated and organizations that have played with people’s health for financial gain are slowly being held to account. The inquiry will ask for full transparency from the 6 PBMs and investigate how they are able to determine prices, availability and more. Their unique position of power within both insurance companies and mail order pharmacies has made PBM’s extremely powerful.

How do we fix it?

With the FTC inquiry we fully expect to see some answers but whilst a full resolution may be some way off, another angle to look at is utilising a pharmacy delivery service that consistently caters to patient needs. Without the need to rely on PBMs, patients can receive medication to their door via a local pharmacy when they need it. Where PBM contracts enforced red tape, RxMIle cut through it. Utilising the most sophisticated pharmacy delivery software, it is now possible for real-time tracking, proof of delivery, and patient retention as well as a prescription delivery portal allowing both pharmacy and patient to be fully aware of medication distribution and arrival. This smart approach means there is no chance of medicine being left uncollected, no risk of it being left in unsuitable temperatures and no opportunity for it to be stored insufficiently. Should this be an avenue you believe your pharmacy should go down, discover all you need to know about starting a prescription courier company. The world of medicine delivery is changing and the pharmacy trends and innovations set out by companies like RxMile go someway to cure the problem caused by PBMs. We help mould the future and bridge gaps between telehealth and medication delivery as well as those between standards and service.

Cultivating the system to the needs of each pharmacy that uses it and providing drivers where necessary, RxMile is putting patients and providers first.

Interested to learn how RxMile can benefit your pharmacy? Book a free trial of our pharmacy software today Our aim is simple. Make medication affordable, accessible, and safe.