Thomas, a patient suffering from a chronic illness, receives all of his medications through his hospital specialty pharmacy and frequently utilizes the support and assistance offered by his liaison throughout his treatment. They chat each month and she checks in on him to see how he’s doing. Before he had access to a liaison to help him, Thomas wasn’t very consistent taking his medications and often had trouble adhering to his treatment plan because his medications cost too much and he wasn’t able to afford them. Thomas has always worked 3 jobs for over 50 years and still wasn’t able to afford his medications, which began at $200 for certain medications at the start of the new year. Thankfully, his pharmacy liaison has been able to find him assistance on the scripts that cause him financial hardship, ultimately getting his primary medication down to a $0 copay and other preventative medications down to a $5 monthly copay instead of a $70 copay.

Unfortunately, Thomas ran into an issue where his medical supplies have to be billed differently and he had to fill them at a different pharmacy instead of going through his trusted hospital specialty pharmacy. Prior to using the hospital pharmacy’s services, Thomas used a local family owned pharmacy right down the road from him, but ever since his major procedure at the hospital, he’s transitioned to using the hospital specialty pharmacy because of the comprehensive services the pharmacy and his liaison can provide him. Recently, when Thomas had to pick up his medical supplies from the local pharmacy, they were refusing to call his doctor’s office for refills and told him he needed to “take care of it because that’s not their job.” He communicated to the local pharmacy that he wanted to transfer those two scripts to a different pharmacy in town, but the pharmacist was very unreceptive to any request for help from Thomas.

His pharmacy liaison happily stepped in to help and told him that she would call his doctor’s office and have them send new prescriptions to his preferred pharmacy as well as have them call Thomas when they were all set to be picked up. His doctor’s office sent the scripts over to the requested pharmacy while the liaison was still on the phone with them, and she then called the new pharmacy to make sure the scripts were received and that there were no billing issues to delay Thomas from accessing the supplies. His liaison confirmed with his doctor’s office that all his information was verified and that he would receive a phone call once the transfer was completed, in order to make the process as smooth as possible. She called Thomas back to inform him of what he was to expect within the next couple hours. Thomas was very grateful that she took time out of her day to really take care of him and was able to set this up for him, even though it did not directly involve the hospital specialty pharmacy. He said, “You have nothing to gain from this, but thank you for taking the time to make sure everything was okay. You’re keeping me alive with these coupons and free deliveries. Without you cutting the prices down, I wouldn’t be able to afford my medications and I wouldn’t be here today. I didn’t think that people who genuinely cared about others, especially big shot pharmacy folk, still existed in the world until you guys.” He went on for a few minutes about how he will be a “forever patient” of this hospital specialty pharmacy and of his liaison, and is beyond thankful for all their help throughout his journey.