|
Thu Jan 24, 2013 at 01:46 PM CST
|
| And another one bites the dust... A pharmacy in South Texas that has been struggling to keep its doors open since Texas cut Medicaid pharmacy reimbursements in the name of managed care will close its doors on Friday.
The Med-Aid Pharmacy in Mission, Texas has been serving customers for the last seven years. They were growing and expanding steadily until the state turned responsibility for setting reimbursement rates over to managed care organizations.
The Texas Tribune reports:
Until March of last year, reimbursement rates were the same throughout the state. After the state expanded managed care, pharmacists signed contracts with multiple managed care organizations and agreed to accept the reimbursement rates for medications set by each organization's pharmacy benefit manager. Pharmacists were unable to find out how much they could be reimbursed or how reimbursement rates compared before signing the contracts.
Sadly, many independent pharmacies have found that those undefined reimbursement rates are not sufficient to allow them to keep their doors open.
Apparently the leaked memo from a CVS pharmacy supervisor that pointed out that reduced reimbursements might "put many independent pharmacy owners in a pinch that they have never before felt" and also saying that the change "poses a huge opportunity for us to grow our company and the scripts and patients that we service" was very much a foreshadowing of the dangers to come for independent pharmacies in Texas.
To find out more about how managed care is devastating pharmacies in Texas, visit Pharmacy Choice and Access Now today! |
|
|
|
|
|
