To date, we’ve published a dozen posts either detailing, or mentioning-in-passing, the clinical and financial benefits a well-run Meds To Beds program offers hospitals and the patients they serve. Which is why we thought it was time to report some of the personal benefits our program delivers — with a handful of stories we’ve heard from the professionals serving our recently-launched Meds To Beds program at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare.
About Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare
TMH is a 772-bed hospital and a regional healthcare system — serving a 17-county region in North Florida and South Georgia — with an acute care hospital, a psychiatric hospital, multiple specialty care centers, three residency programs and 35 affiliated physician practices. In 2022 alone, TMH’s 710+ physicians, and its medical staff, saw 31,190 inpatient admissions.
ProxsysRx recently initiated a soft launch of its Meds To Beds program at TMH, serving two of the eight “units” in the health system’s main tower, and it didn’t take long for individual patient stories to start making their way back to our corporate office.
Medication consult ensures patient a medication she can afford
One of the first patients we served had been written a prescription she couldn’t afford. Even with her insurance coverage, the co-pay was beyond her means. Under normal circumstances, that likely would have meant that she would have simply had to do without her medication.
The patient’s Rx Care Advocate (RCA) reported the problem back to one of ProxsysRx’s pharmacists, who promptly phoned the patient’s physician — recommending a similar medication that was available at a significantly lower cost. The physician promptly issued a new prescription for the recommended medication, our pharmacy filled the prescription — and the patient left the hospital with her drugs.
“Imagine,” says ProxsysRx VP of Growth Howard Hall, “if this had happened just days earlier — before we launched our Meds To Beds program. The patient would have left the hospital without her medication, and taken her prescription to be filled at her pharmacy. If it had been a large chain pharmacy, she would have essentially been presented with the option of paying a bill she couldn’t afford — or doing without.
“The kind of consultative support ProxsysRx offered her is rare enough with privately-owned pharmacies, but it’s virtually unheard-of among chains.”
ProxsysRx’s prescription-savings program to the rescue
What’s particularly interesting about this second story is that it involved a patient who wasn’t even in one of the two units we were serving.
Long before ProxsysRx ever launches a health system’s Meds To Beds program, our pharmacists, RCAs and techs make themselves known to the hospital’s physicians, nurses and support staff — ensuring that they understand how our program will benefit their patients, once it’s launched. In TMH’s case, that included a case manager, working on an entirely different floor, who came to our staff asking for help with one of her patients.
The gentleman in question had no health insurance coverage at all, and the cash price for his prescription was far beyond his means to pay. Our pharmacists were only too happy to help. So they searched the database of ProxsysRx’s MedServRx prescription discounting service for the best available price for his meds. That price was so low that the hospital’s Charity Care program offered to pay the full price, and the patient left the hospital with his prescription, free of charge.
Return patient leaves hospital with no waiting
Another patient was particularly thrilled with the convenience our Meds To Beds service offered her, particularly after an especially troublesome experience she’d had after a previous stay at TMH. “The last time she was in the hospital,” says ProxsysRx Director of Pharmacy Operations Drew Holleman, “she’d correctly anticipated that getting her discharge prescription from her pharmacy — a large chain — was going to be a huge hassle.
“Knowing that, she’d asked her next-door-neighbor for help getting her prescription — which had been phoned-into the pharmacy. The neighbor (and, I might add, good friend), waited at the pharmacy for two hours — and still wasn’t able to get the prescription filled. Altogether, it took the pharmacy several hours to get that prescription filled — and this was for medication the patient needed to take as soon as possible.
“Needless to say, she couldn’t have been happier to learn that, thanks to ProxsysRx’s Meds To Beds program, she’d be leaving the hospital with her prescription in-hand.”
Three stories in as many days. Par for the course with Meds To Beds.
“We loved hearing those stories from TMH,” Drew explains, “but these kinds of things happen every day in the hospitals we serve.” ProxsysRx currently manages Meds To Beds programs for 16 hospitals, he continued — and given the number of TMH’s units ProxsysRx will be serving once it’s fully-operational (which will likely be within a month of initial launch), “we expect to be hearing a lot more good stories from TMH real soon!”
ProxsysRx and TMH: A shared commitment
“Like so many of the hospitals we serve, TMH is strongly focused on providing proactive patient care — which aligns perfectly with our Meds To Beds program-management philosophy.”
In addition to the individual-patient stories, Drew’s been pleased with the reports he’s heard of the soft launch’s overall success at TMH. “We always start small, to get all our systems, processes and communication-channels in place — and to work-out any kinks before we’re serving an entire health system’s patients.”
ProxsysRx still has a couple of hires to make before our Meds To Beds program is fully-staffed at TMH. Altogether, Drew projects, “We’ll have seven RCAs and seven to eight pharmacy techs working with our three pharmacists — and that’s in addition to our Front End Coordinator, who manages the pharmacy’s retail component.”
News of ProxsysRx’s service and support has even started spreading among TMH’s workforce. “We’ve already had several employees transfer their prescriptions from their existing pharmacies to ours. They’ve heard about the competitive pricing we can offer through MedServRx, and they love the convenience that comes with being able to fill their prescriptions ‘at the office,’ if you will — so we’re anticipating that, as word-of-mouth continues spreading, we’ll be serving a lot more TMH employees.”
Meds To Beds is just one component of ProxsysRx’s overall mission
“Like most of the health systems we serve,” Howard explains, “TMH has contracted with ProxsysRx for multiple services,” including management of their 340B program and building an onsite specialty pharmacy. “All of our services work-together to improve the quality of care hospitals can offer their patients and their employees, while at the same time increasing the revenues they generate. Revenue they can then re-invest back into their systems, to further benefit their patients and support their missions.
“At the end of the day, that’s why health systems hire us. And, I might add, why we started ProxsysRx in the first place. We are, and always have been, very much a mission-driven organization.”
ProxsysRx is here to help, if you have questions.
There are so many ways ProxsysRx can help hospitals unlock pharmacy’s potential for supporting their missions in the communities they serve. For more information, contact Howard Hall. C: 214.808.2700 | howard.hall@proxsysrx.com
Additional Meds To Beds posts
How Meds To Beds Programs Improve Outpatient Medication Compliance
How Meds To Beds Can Drive Your 340B Savings
