We wanted to provide a reminder to all staff regarding the changes occurring in the Pharmacy starting next Monday, 4/3/23. As previously communicated, WNCCHS Pharmacy will no longer be lowering copays for patients, including Employees, to $15 if their insurance copay is higher than that. Most employees are aware of this, but a reminder tends to be helpful. Patients are very accustomed to this old way of reducing copays, but this often resulted in significant financial losses for the organization by reducing copays to where they price was below our cost. We also used to allow patients to choose whether to bill insurance or not for their prescriptions. These practices will change on Monday.
Per our contracts with the insurance companies that we fill prescriptions for, we are required to bill the patient's insurance first. Then, we may apply a discount to the copay - if it is eligible based on our cost. Eligibility for any copay reduction will be based on our acquisition cost of the medication. If the acquisition cost of the medication is low enough, we can reduce the copay amount to the Full Pay equivalent amount. If our acquisition cost is above the copay amount, there will be no reduction in copay. This new process ensures that we won't sell prescriptions below our cost.
Pharmacy and PAS staff will continue to do our best to sign up patients for copay assistance coupons whenever available.
Thank you for your understanding of these changes that we have been advertising since the beginning of the year.
