One Way That Mail Order Pharmacies Are Disadvantaged

All I ever hear is complaints from retail pharmacies about the advantages of the mail order pharmacy since they are owned by the PBMs.  Let’s spend a minute on one of the ways they are disadvantaged (which as a consumer is really annoying).

If a retail pharmacy wants to call a patient for a refill reminder or enroll a patient in an automated refill program or talk to a patient about their condition, they can do that.  There’s no limitations put on their pharmacy-patient relationship.

When the mail order pharmacy tries to do the same thing (which by the way I believe is good patient care), they have to get approval from the PBM clients. Why?  If it’s part of the standard practice of pharmacy and the retailers can do it, why can’t the mail order pharmacies?

And, yes…I had an incident yesterday that annoyed me.  I tried to sign up for the auto-refill program at the mail order pharmacy that is owned by the PBM that contracts with the managed care company that the broker who serves my employer selected.

But, when I tried to sign up, they couldn’t do it.  Apparently, the managed care company doesn’t believe in auto-refill (a point which I will be raising with their mgmt team shortly).  I’m sure the argument is that it creates waste.  I could argue against that, but I’ll save that for another time.  Let’s say I concede that may be an issue.  Great, then don’t push auto-refill.  But, why can’t I sign up for it?  It should help me be compliant.  (Note that my MPR is well above 90%…but I’d like to be at 100%.)

But, the bigger issue here is why is mail disadvantaged by their PBM ownership?  Their a network pharmacy with a requirement to manage me as a patient.  Let them do that.