Louisiana’s charitable pharmacies dispense leftover medications

8th May 2017   ·   0 Comments

By Susan Buchanan
Contributing Writer

Community-based, prescription-drug disposals, known as “take-backs,” were held in Louisiana and nationwide on April 29. But what if you had leftover medications that you felt others might be able to use? Those drugs can be delivered to state-designated, charitable pharmacies for people who can’t afford needed medicines. Eleven of these charitable apothecaries are licensed by the Louisiana Board of Pharmacy.

Charitable pharmacies are authorized by Louisiana legislation that became effective in 1989 and was amended in 2003, according to Robert Johannessen, spokesman for the state’s Department of Health. These operations dispense free prescription drugs to patients who are screened based on needs. Pharmacy permits are granted to groups federally recognized as charitable.

Four of these pharmacies in Louisiana—in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Houma and Monroe—are under the umbrella of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul in St. Louis, but the four operate as separate entities, Deacon Rudolph Rayfield of the Society’s New Orleans group said. Of the seven charitable pharmacies licensed by other groups, two are in Shreveport, with one each in Alexandria, DeRidder, Eunice, Lake Charles and Marksville.

“If a member of a family dies, they can bring leftover prescription medicines to our pharmacy on Gentilly Boulevard,” Rayfield said last week. “Our pharmacist will see whether he can do anything with them, based on applicable laws.” Located in the city’s Seventh Ward, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul Community Pharmacy opened its doors in 1998. Back then, Louisiana was one of the first states to operate charitable apothecaries.

At the St. Vincent de Paul Community Pharmacy in Baton Rouge, CEO Michael Acaldo said that unexpired prescription drugs that haven’t been tampered with can be donated. Medications that are federally controlled substances—including certain pain killers, codeine and amphetamines—are not accepted.

“In Baton Rouge, most of our donations are from nursing homes,” Acaldo said. “A physician changes an elderly patient’s prescription for one drug and because of possible interactions, he also changes other medications that the patient is taking. Some of the drugs are wrapped in one-month blister packets, and maybe only a couple of days’ worth of those pills have been consumed. Nursing homes send the unused portion to us, and if our pharmacist approves them, these pills can be prescribed to others.”

The Baton Rouge pharmacy also receives donated drugs from doctors’ samples and from individuals, Acaldo said. Last year, the operation dispensed over 22,000 prescriptions valued at $2.2 million to 1,800 patients in twelve parishes in the region. “Our repeat customers get their medicines here monthly,” he said. “Many of our patients are over the age of 50, and the majority of the requests we receive are for heart, high-blood-pressure and diabetic medicines.”

Since they’re part of a Catholic organization, St. Vincent de Paul pharmacies don’t provide birth control.

Staffed by one full-time and several volunteer pharmacists, the Baton Rouge pharmacy costs $300,000 to run yearly. That doesn’t include the value of in-kind drug donations.

As drug prices escalate, elderly people on fixed incomes and low-income and homeless individuals struggle to pay for medications. “We’ve had patients come to us directly from hospital emergency rooms with their prescriptions,” Acaldo said. “We know that our service extends lives and saves lives.”

After Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, some of the uninsured and working poor in New Orleans were especially hard pressed to fill prescriptions and turned to the pharmacy on Gentilly Boulevard.

Just how fast are drug costs rising? Prescription-drug benefit costs for retirees 65 and older grew by an estimated 10.9 percent in 2016 and could climb another 9.9 percent in 2017, according to a survey last year of insurers, managed-care organizations, pharmacy-benefit managers and others by Segal Consulting, a human-resources advisory unit of Segal Group in New York. Drug costs for those under the age of 65 are growing at an even faster rate than they are for seniors.

Throwing away expensive drugs that could be used by someone else is clearly wasteful, Acaldo said. Lawmakers seem to agree. As of mid-2016, 42 states had passed laws allowing drug redistribution programs, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures in Washington, DC and Denver. Many of these programs are small, but growing, while others aren’t operational yet. Drug donation programs in Iowa, Wyoming and Oklahoma in particular have expanded, while states in the Northeast have been slow to allow them.

Various factors dog donation efforts. “Common obstacles are lack of awareness about programs, no central agency or entity designated to operate and fund the program, and the added work and responsibility for repository sites that accept the donations,” the NCSL said. In Louisiana, little awareness that charitable pharmacies exist remains an issue, Acaldo said.

Charitable pharmacies can help cancer patients, who may need chemotherapy pills that cost as much as $1,000 a month. The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network supports donating leftover drugs to improve access to treatment. Legislation for such programs must outline that the drugs be unopened, not expired and have been stored at proper temperatures, David Woodmansee, state and local campaigns director at the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network in Washington, DC said last week.

“But with many states facing tough budget decisions in the last several years, funding for these donation programs has been difficult to find,” Woodmansee also said. And when funds are available, patients and donors have to be protected. “Legislation must grant liability immunity for those who donate drugs and administer the program, while patients receiving donated drugs must have an attending physician’s approval,” he said.

Americans, meanwhile, have become aware of the health and environmental risks of tossing unused medications in sinks, toilets or the garbage. Community take-backs, allowing people to leave unused drugs at a central spot for disposal, are far bigger than today’s prescription-donation programs. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency encourages participation in these take-backs.

An EPA study in 2013 looked for 56 drugs in water samples from large wastewater treatment plants nationwide. Over half of the samples tested positive for at least 25 of the pharmaceuticals that the agency was monitoring.

If you’d like to learn more about disposal of, or eligibility for, prescription drugs at charitable pharmacies in New Orleans or Baton Rouge, visit svdpneworleans.org/community-pharmacy.html or svdpbr.org/Pre-scriptions.aspx on the web.

This article originally published in the May 8, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.