Pharmacists say schools’ mail-order policy will hurt business
A change in the way many school employees in Stark and six other counties get prescription medications has upset area pharmacists who complain that their business is now going out of state.
The new mail-order prescription plan stems from an amendment to union contracts that went into effect Aug. 1. It affects 6,700 Stark County teachers and nonteaching employees.
With cuts in state funding hurting many districts, the prescription change is aimed at saving money for school systems, its supporters say.
The move will save a projected $2.25 million annually in the seven-county, 14,000-member public school consortium, said Larry Morgan, superintendent of Stark County Schools.
Morgan also is chairman of the Stark County Schools Council of Governments (SCSCG), a member of the larger Community Health Care Coalition that offers cooperative purchasing power.
That savings will help retain teaching jobs, he said recently.
Though the savings are not broken down by district, locally, the Stark County membership of 6,700, nearly half the consortium’s 14,000 members, would suggest that Stark’s savings — the dollars staying here — would be roughly half that figure, or $1.12 million.
But the dollars leaving Stark and its six other county consortium partners for the prescription plan and other changes will total in the millions.
That has local independent pharmacists concerned about the loss in business.
“We are having difficulty getting accurate numbers,” said Paul White, president of The Medicine Shoppe and Medicine Center. “But we do know this is millions of dollars.”
“With 18 school districts represented in Stark County alone, that would represent the largest pool of employees within the county. So moving their prescription business from the county would be devastating,” said Nancy Wharmby, certified public accountant and executive vice president and controller of The Medicine Shoppe and Medicine Center in Stark and Tuscarawas counties.
WHAT’S DIFFERENT?
The new plan administered by Caremark, a pharmacy-benefits manager headquartered in Woonsocket, R.I., and the previous plan’s provider, allows members to fill one original prescription and one refill at the local pharmacy of their choice.
After that, maintenance prescriptions — drugs for chronic, ongoing medical conditions — must be ordered via mail through a Caremark processing center in Texas.
That means thousands of refills won’t be purchased in local pharmacies.
“The city (of Canton) is pumping money into the city to try to save jobs,” said pharmacist Steve Fettman, owner of Davies Drugs. “The way I look at it, these people are working and paying taxes, and by doing it, they’re going to support schools. What the mail order basically does is take the refills away from independent pharmacies, and that’s their bread and butter.”
What has been overlooked, say Fettman and White, is the way independent pharmacies support the community.
“All of us help the schools, teachers, sometimes teams, cheerleaders with donations. And we don’t mind doing that kind of stuff for kids. We’re asked on Election Day to vote for bond issues. Our reward is we lose business,” White said.
“When was the last time a high-school kid asked Caremark for a donation for her team?”
Diane Miller, Ohio Education Association (OEA) labor relations consultant, doesn’t see it that way.
“It seems disingenuous to me that someone is criticizing the schools for sending jobs out of the area and to attempt to bring political pressure on the schools to say we’re sending jobs elsewhere,” she said.
“Our response would be, what we have done saves jobs. We haven’t sent jobs outside Stark County. We’re saving teachers’ jobs. Their (the independent pharmacists’) bottom line is the bottom line.”
The transition was not a snap decision.
Miller said voting by the various unions in the member districts and locals, as well as tabulating, took nearly a year. Amendments to the health-care package, she said, required a majority vote for ratification. Lacking that, she added, the existing health-care package would have remained unchanged.
“This is the process we go through to make changes,” said Tim Miller, also an OEA labor-relations consultant. “We bargained in good faith. We now have a legally binding contract.”
THE IMPACT
The change has left some union members confused or unsure about what they voted on.
Teacher Ralph Jentes, vice president of the Louisville Education Association, is vocal about his concerns. He questions the validity of Morgan’s claim that the decision saved teachers’ jobs.
“We wonder how he quantifies that, in light of the fact that the COG is a virtual monopoly. With COG, what they tell you is a good deal is what you accept, and all the superintendents fall right into line. The same is true with prescriptions,” Jentes said.
At North Canton City Schools, Superintendent Michael Gallina said he had received only one call from a constituent inquiring about the new plan.
“I had two points of contact, one with the constituent and another with a local pharmacist I spoke with at a Rotary meeting. I tried to get both of them back to Larry (Morgan), because he put it together,” Gallina said.
CITY COUNCIL’S OPTION
About 18 months ago, a similar proposal came before Canton City Council to move to a mail-away prescription program. Councilman-at-large Bill Smuckler said the independent pharmacists attended a council meeting, outlining the impact such a move would have on the local economy.
“Their argument was that we’re spending millions of dollars to create or retain business here for Stark, and we’re sending millions to Texas,” Smuckler recalled. “Part of it was that the local pharmacies, if they’re told to exist on emergency medication, they’re going to have a hard time making it. So the city gave employees the option. We have some people who are mailing away, and there are some, like me, who go to the local pharmacy.”
Smuckler said his personal decision to stop using mail-away prescriptions was made after he ran out of a medication during a business trip. He called the mail-order pharmacy and was told the refill was in the mail and it could not be reissued to another address.
“When I got to my destination, my wife called and said it arrived. I called them again, and they told me to have my wife overnight it to me. I actually got sick on that trip.”
December 4th, 2011 at 9:53 am
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