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EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS
MESSAGE

IS THERE A WAY TO GET REALLY

GOOD PRICES FOR PRESCRIPTIONS?

Yes, there’s an app for that.

By Stephen Fitzer, BCMS Executive Director

hysicians are often asked by patients “how much will I’m telling you about it because I
P that medicine cost?” or “where should I go to get the think it will make life a lot easier
best price on that medicine?” Physicians are normally
for both you as a physician and for
not pharmacists. Without knowing the pharmacy your patients.
prices of drugs, a physician could be prescribing drugs that the pa- To be clear, I am not a physician;
tient cannot afford. Wouldn’t it be great to have a free and reliable I am a patient. My intention with
source that both physicians and patients could use to find that in- this article is to tell you about a no-
formation? I’m going to tell you about one in this article. cost phone app that saved me and
If patients do not know how much a medicine costs, are afraid a others lots of money on prescriptions. Sometimes AMAZING
medicine is too expensive, have been quoted a high price by a phar- amounts of money. Disclaimer: I receive no compensation for
macy, or do not have the time or ability to call around or visit phar- telling you about this, nor does anyone I know receive any compen-
macies to find the best price, they may either pay too much or not sation. BCMS is not endorsing this plan, has no relationship with
have the prescription filled at all. When the prescription is not filled, the app provider and receives no compensation from this company.
the patient becomes non-compliant, may suffer unnecessarily, may This is purely my experience that I believe will really help physicians
wind up back in the doctor’s office or worse, winds up in an emer- and patients on a regular basis.
gency room somewhere. The service I am talking about is a free phone app called
For patients that have insurance covering prescription meds, this GoodRx. It is available from both the Apple and Android app stores
issue is not so severe. The insurance company has usually pre-ne- by typing in the name. Using the app is as simple as entering the
gotiated prices with pharmacies so the patient doesn’t have to haggle name of the medicine, the dosage and the count, and letting the
or shop around. The patient in those cases will usually have a co- app tell you the price that is charged by most major pharmacies in
pay that is manageable. But what about patients that don’t have any town. In the case of San Antonio, it will normally list Walmart,
insurance to cover their medications and are left to themselves to Costco, Walgreens, CVS and Target (Sam’s Club and HEB are no-
find the best prices for their medicines? How about when a patient ticeably absent from the list). Upon entering a brand name medicine,
has Medicare coverage (like I do), where Medicare prescription cov- it will usually list the price of the generic, if available. It lists the
erage is optional for an extra fee? I did the math and, for me, it pharmacies in order of price, with the cheapest at the top of the
didn’t make sense to sign up for Medicare Part D (prescription cov- list. It also tells how far away the pharmacy is from where you are
erage). The cost benefit just wasn’t there. at the time you look it up. The listed price will usually say “cash” or
Getting back to the main point, when a patient doesn’t have pre- “coupon.” If it says “coupon,” touching the “coupon” box will
scription insurance, what do they do? bring up the codes the pharmacy will need to confirm and approve
I found myself in that situation and started looking into various the price. Sometimes the price the pharmacy charges will be slightly
drug discount programs. Some charge a fee, some have a small different from the price listed by GoodRx, but the price is usually
network, some are only mail order, some can’t tell you how much quite accurate. Sometimes GoodRx may not reflect a pharmacy’s
the discount will be on a medicine, and some are just outright current price because something has changed (prices change fre-
scams. Then I found something that made the process a lot easier. quently on drugs). Patients can call ahead and confirm the price

14 San Antonio Medicine • March 2018