Medication Dispensing
Beginning Summer 2009 our office began dispensing many common prescription medications in our office. These are pre-filled bottles of medications available after visit. This saves our families a trip to the pharmacy. We are currently stocking antibiotics, asthma medications and many skin medications.
What is cost to me for this?
Our system processes insurance claims using the same system as at pharmacies. We will need your prescription card the first time you get a medication from us and if your insurance changes. Just like a pharmacy we will know your copay at the time of visit and will collect at front desk when you get your medicine after your visit. Since our system uses the same system as pharmacies your copay would be the same as a retail pharmacy. Our retail prices are set at average for our area. In other words if you do not have health insurance coverage you may find our prices to be better than many pharmacies but not necessarily the lowest in town. Always best to call around if you are paying cash for your medicines as prices can vary widely.
Which insurances can you bill?
Our list of insurance is rapidly expanding. We recently added Marion-Polk Oregon Health Plan to our list. Insurances not currently contracted include Providence, Kaiser, open card medicaid, CareOregon, ODS, Health Net, Humana, and OEBB. We are continuing to work with our vendor to work with more insurances.
In addition, our system is not capable of billing secondary insurance. In other words if your child is double covered and secondary insurance covers copay. We are looking to upgrade our software so these can be billed.
Since you don’t have a pharmacist is the medication safe?
The medications come in pre-filled quantities and use barcode scanning to confirm the correct bottle is dispensed. In many ways we are more safe than a retail pharmacy since our inventory is smaller and there is no counting of pills or picking medication off shelf based on name of medication.
We also see the advantage of getting medication from your doctor’s office is if you have a question about the medication you can quickly clarify any concerns with your provider. Also we like it since we are more assured our patients received medication quickly and know they received the exact medication we intended for them to have.
Feel free to use comment section for any questions about this new benefit for our patients.
