Published: October 11, 2008 10:58 pm      

West Virginia Rx gets meds out quickly

FAIRMONT — Under the old system, a diabetic or someone else with a chronic condition taking advantage of prescription-assistance programs might have waited four to six weeks to get their free medications.

Today, with West Virginia Rx, that patient can get the meds in a day or two via a mail-order, centrally operated pharmacy that not only gets the prescription filled quickly, but also helps out with the copious amounts paperwork involved.

West Virginia Rx was created during the 2008 West Virginia legislative session and filled its first prescription in April, according to executive director Brenda Dane, who operates the mail-order pharmacy from the West Virginia Health Right free clinic in Charleston.

“Currently, we have 300 patients and we already have filled $400,000 worth of prescription medications with just 300 patients,” she said.

She expects that number to grow as more people learn about the program and sign up.

“There are 400,000 uninsured people in the state of West Virginia, and out of 400,000, there are about 225,000 that we feel qualify for West Virginia Rx,” she said. “There is no cap on the number we can serve. As the program grows, as people start to enroll even more, as prescribers begin to use the system, it could grow as large as it needs to be.”

Participants must be uninsured and at 200 percent of the poverty level or below, Dane said. For a single person, that would mean an annual salary of $20,800 or below; for a family of four, that would be $42,400 or below.

“We can fill a prescription in 24 to 48 hours,” Dane said. “If we receive the script by 2 in the afternoon, we can have it in the mail that night and it can be a the patient’s door the next morning or the following, depending what part of the state they live in.”

When West Virginia Rx was created, people already could take advantage of prescription-assistance programs in which pharmaceutical companies donate medications to those who need them. The Partnership for Prescription Assistance, often advertised in television commercials with spokesman Montel Williams, is one of the better known programs.

However, Dane said, in addition to taking a while for patients to get the medications, a great deal of paperwork had to be filled out each time a prescription is filled.

“What West Virginia Rx does is that it pulled those pharmaceutical companies that were doing individual programs into one big place, which reduces a tremendous amount of paperwork,” Dane said. “We do all the paperwork instead of pharmaceutical companies doing them individually, and the doctors’ offices don’t have to do the paperwork anymore.”

The West Virginia Rx formulary, or list of drugs, contains about 100 prescriptions, mostly for chronic conditions, although it also features a few antibiotics.

“We even have a couple of cancer drugs,” Dane said.

Patients can sign up for the program in two ways: either directly with West Virginia Rx or through their doctor’s office. A health-care provider must be an enrolled West Virginia Rx physician, but that does not present a problem, Dane said.

“We would register them for that patient,” Dane said. “They could get a prescription and send it to us directly, and we would enroll the doctor and patient.”

Currently, the state’s 10 free health clinics are facing rules still being drawn up by the Board of Pharmacy that will be implemented after passage during the 2009 legislative session. Some clinic officials fear the rules will make it more difficult to send their patients home with prescription medications the same day they see a doctor.

The West Virginia Rx program might help, said Laura Jones, executive director of Milan Puskar Health Right in Morgantown. However, an annual $30 enrollment fee must be considered, Jones said.

Also, the formulary of drugs available through West Virginia Rx differs than what Milan Puskar Health Right can get for free through donations of generic drugs from Mylan Pharmaceuticals.

“As the formulary grows, that may be an option we want to consider,” Jones said. “But we still have to help people find the enrollment fee.”

E-mail Mary Wade Burnside at mwburnside@timeswv.com.