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Community pharmacy offers drugs to low-income, underinsured residents Date published: 6/26/2007
BY AMY FLOWERS UMBLE
Fewer area residents will have to choose between paying bills and buying medicine soon. The Fredericksburg Area Regional Health Council began offering low-cost prescription medications to needy patients discharged from Mary Washington Hospital this month. By the end of the summer, the pharmacy program should be available to residents of Fredericksburg and four surrounding counties who meet certain income requirements. The pharmacy is in the new Lloyd F. Moss Free Clinic near the Fredericksburg hospital. Efforts to set up a community pharmacy began after a community survey five years ago. The Rappahannock United Way asked people what they considered the most pressing needs. Affordable medicine was near the top, said Stephen Batsche, president of the Rappahannock United Way. Moss Clinic patients already could get prescription drugs. But to qualify for the clinic, people could make no more than 125 percent of the federal poverty guidelines. For a single person, that's an income of $12,762.50 or less based on U.S. Department of Health and Human Services formulas. It's easier to qualify for the pharmacy program, which sets the income limits at 200 percent of the federal poverty guidelines. Many people are going without medicine because they lack insurance or have insurance that doesn't cover the high-cost prescriptions, said Kimberly Smart, grants and development manager for the Mary Washington Hospital Foundation. For example, Levaquin, a drug to treat infections, and Lotrel, a drug to lower blood pressure, each cost about $125 for a one-month supply for those without insurance coverage. Often, they would check out of the hospital with a few days' worth of drugs. When that ran out, patients would beg or borrow money to get some more medicine. Usually they'd wind up back in the hospital, said Jennifer Reynolds, corporate and community programs manager for MediCorp Health System, the hospital's parent company. The hospital already had a program to help needy patients get medicine. But it could take 12 weeks to get the drugs. And patients had to fill out the paperwork in one location then go somewhere else to pick up the medications. With the community pharmacy, a case manager screens patients and completes the paperwork before they leave the hospital.
Date published: 6/26/2007
Say what you want, but Fredericksburg really knows how to take care of their lower income people. It's great, they need health care. They aren't bad people, they just have less money.
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