Melinda Tuhus Photo
Edith Reid (pictured) didn’t know what she was going to do when she learned a ten-day supply of a specialized antibiotic for her mother cost $400 and would not be covered by Medicare. Her doctors at Yale-New Haven Hospital went “beyond the call of duty” and arranged for her to get a 75 percent discount.
Reid’s mom, Edith Hill, is one of 5,000 Yale-New Haven patients who have benefited from the federal 340B program that allows those with no prescription coverage or inadequate coverage to participate in securing reduced price or free medications. Yale-New Haven just crossed the million-dollar threshold in savings from the program that have been passed on to patients.
“It was a big help to me,” said Reid, who cares for her 90-year-old mother in her Beaver Hill apartment with the help of an aide, Frances Barrett (on right in photo), and occasional visits from her sister, Sarah Washington (on left), who lives out of state. “I was concerned. My mom needed to be treated” for an aggressive urinary tract infection. Her mother’s doctors had talked about putting her back in the hospital, “but we didn’t have to do that when I got the medicine.”
James Rawlings, executive director of community health at YNHH, said the Prescription Assistance Program helps for those who don’t have any or sufficient drug coverage, “Medicare patients falling through the ‘donut hole,’ and some who have no insurance at all. We applied [for the 340B program] and are eligible so we can purchase medications at a lower rate and pass the savings on. It’s mostly maintenance [drugs] for chronic diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes, and also pain meds, so we can complete the medical plan of the provider.” He said he isn’t aware of any drugs that aren’t eligible for the program, which the hospital joined in 2006.
He said to get the word out to patients, signs are posted in the emergency department, the clinics and in certain units, “so patients understand they are eligible; sometimes patients are too proud to tell a provider they can’t afford the prescription, so we try to make sure the provider gets a good understanding of the challenges so they can tell patients about it and offer it; we try to get our providers engaged.”
New Haven’s Community Action Agency began offering its clients the same discount earlier this year. Isadora del Vecchio, CAA’s program coordinator, said she hopes it will extend to the 11 other CAAs around the state. She said as the recession grinds on, with an increasing number of long-term unemployed, many local residents are unable to pay for their prescription drugs. She said the program serves both low- and moderate-income persons and works through local community health centers to get patients the drugs they need, either free or at a much reduced cost, like $10 for a three-month supply.
CAA client Barbara Price suffers from both high blood pressure and diabetes and needs a number of life-saving medications. Before she qualified for the program, she said, “I was having so much trouble, because I don’t have health insurance, and I can’t find a job, and whatever little money I had was going out the window [to pay for medications].
She got connected to the program, and when she got one of her first prescriptions filled, she was ecstatic. “I couldn’t believe it,” she said in her lilting West Indian accent. “I thought I was riding on the moon somewhere.”
For more information on YNHH’s Prescription Assistance Program, contact Medical Center Pharmacy on York Street at 203.688.7064. To reach DelVecchio, call 203.387.7700.