Patients of Thundermist Health Center now have a new benefit. Through a partnership with CVS Caremark Corp., they will be able to get discount prescriptions at three CVS/pharmacy locations, including one in Thundermist’s Woonsocket facility.
The discounts are provided under a section of the U.S. Public Health Service Act that allows community health centers to buy pharmaceuticals at federal discount prices.
Through the partnership, CVS will now sell its medications at a 30- to 50-percent discount to Thundermist patients. It will keep track of what they use, and at the end of each month, Thundermist will replenish the supply with drugs it has purchased at a discount.
“It helps support the mission of Thundermist to help those in need,” said Ernie Balasco, chief operating officer of Thundermist. “It makes no sense to diagnose someone with pneumonia and not be able to give them access to affordable medications.”
Thundermist is part of Rhode Island’s network of community health centers. It provides primary care, mostly to the uninsured and to Medicaid recipients, with fees on a sliding scale. The nonprofit has facilities in Woonsocket, West Warwick and South County.
To meet the needs of all Thundermist patients, CVS is not only offering discounted prescriptions at the Woonsocket clinic store, but also at stores in West Warwick and Wakefield.
“The two additional locations were to serve the Thundermist patients who were served at the South County and West Warwick health centers,” said Carolyn Castel, a spokeswoman for CVS. “Access to medication is very important and is something we support strongly. It brings better adherence [to doctors’ orders] and better outcomes.”
Previous to the partnership with CVS, which came to full fruition on July 1, Thundermist had been operating an in-house pharmacy. That began in 2002, but was it was limited in scope and reach and had high operational expenses, according to a news release.
“With our one pharmacy, we were incurring losses of over $200,000 per year because basically all of the uninsured were coming to our pharmacy and all of the insured patients were going to the retail stores,” said Balasco.
“If they’re uninsured,” he added, “even at 30 to 50 percent off they couldn’t afford all of the medications, so Thundermist would subsidize it. Now that we have the CVS stores online, we’ll benefit from the contracting for the insured patients, and the money we make on the HMOs can be redirected to supplement the cost for the uninsured. It’s a beautiful thing.”
In a news release, Maria Montanaro, president and CEO of Thundermist, said the partnership will allow Thundermist “to reach all our 26,000 patients across the state with the broadest possible range of available medications, and state-of-the-art pharmacy services through one of the nation’s premier pharmacies.”
“We are very grateful for CVS’s partnership,” she added. “It will make a huge difference in allowing us to expand access to affordable medications to our patients and offer them state-of-the-art pharmacy services. We could not achieve that on our own.”
