Mail Orders

We deal with it every day, patients who walk in and say they have to go to mail order with their insurance. As you know, this is a bit of a ‘smoke-and-mirrors’ game and patients can often opt out of this service.

Unfortunately, mail orders aren’t going to disappear and will continue to happen more and more. We encourage you to be proactive about keeping patients and to educate them about exactly what their options are.

‘Mandatory’ is the key word

There are situations in which pharmacies will sell small businesses on saving so much money by using mail order and sometimes these are truly mandatory mail orders. However, it is possible to fight that fight. We have had patients who have called and were able to remove mail order.

You may also have a Part D Plan that has given the patient the impression that they have no other option. When these companies call, you are perfectly within your rights to say you only do transfers at the patient’s request and that you will need to hear from the patient. When we get in contact with the patient, they often don’t know that they have the option to stay. We have had some success with keeping patients this way. Educating your patients about what their options are and fight to keep them.

Your patients don’t want mail order, your prescribers don’t want mail order and you don’t have to either. Don’t give your patients up without a fight and encourage them to speak with their HR departments.