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Return to Expedite-Rx Home Page It’s Called "Due Diligence" Tom Curb, R.Ph. (A February 12, 2004, story in the national media reported that in December 2003, The State of Minnesota set out to find pharmacies to list on its web site for citizens wanting to purchase prescriptions from Canada. Surveyors for Minnesota's Department of Human Services Pharmacy Board spent a week examining Canadian pharmacies’ operations, and concluded that only two of eight Canadian pharmacies, Total Care Pharmacy (TCP) of Calgary, Alberta, and Granville Pharmacy of Vancouver, B.C., met Minnesota’s "high standards" of pharmacy practice. In fact the Executive Director of the Minnesota Board of Pharmacy said, "The two Canadian pharmacies listed on Minnesota's Web site probably are as good or better than Minnesota pharmacies." The Minnesota surveyors further reported to the director that, "Total Care Pharmacy far surpassed the other seven pharmacies that we visited.") Minnesota’s 2003 concerns were similar to the earlier ones of US benefit plan Sponsors, who even in 2002 realized that due to increasing public awareness of cheaper foreign drugs and ease of acquisition via the Internet, without the provision of protective measures there was a potential for danger to their members’ health. Therefore, concerned US benefit plans moved to take steps to incorporate essential and proven patient protective measures into their benefits designs. One important step was to confirm the "credentials" of Canadian sources. More than a dozen established Canadian suppliers were interviewed about licensure, accountability, capability, and professionalism. An April 2002 on-site inspection – like that of Minnesota’s in 2003 - also found that Total Care Pharmacy far surpassed the other Canadian pharmacies.However, to more fully protect their members, the US benefit plans "raised the safety bar" well above the requirements of Minnesota. An even more important patient-protective step was to insure that the plans’ claims processor could coordinate with plan members’ central history profiles to perform interactions and contraindications checks between the US network and the Canadian-dispensed prescriptions. To accomplish this indispensable safeguard, it became necessary to have a technological interface, Expedite-Rx, to enable the plan’s claims processor to maintain complete medical and prescription data. And, to complete the patient-safety loop, the Canadian pharmacy must be able to electronically access the plans’ claims processor. Again, Total Care Pharmacy rose to the occasion. As proof of the success of these patient-safety measures, after processing almost 34,000 prescriptions from Total Care Pharmacy (TCP), (1) there has not been a single reported receipt of a counterfeit drug from TCP; (2) there has not been a single reported case of patient receipt of a substandard product from TCP; and (3) there has not been a single reported instance of an adverse drug event due to a TCP prescription. Meanwhile, plans and members have saved more than five million dollars ($5,000,000) when compared to the cost of those same drugs had they been purchased in the already discounted US retail network. This amounts to an additional average savings of more than $157.00 per Canadian prescription. * *Rx volume and savings updated – see text of "oral presentation to HHS commission" |
