My pharmacy is closing, how do I choose a new one?

Janell Sluga Medicare & Individual Health Insurance Account Executive View Bio

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Question:

I just heard that Rite Aid is closing all New York Stores. That is my pharmacy, how do I choose a new one?

Answer:

The closing of the Rite Aide Pharmacy chain will impact a lot of lives across New York. It is always sad to see a business of any type close.

You will need to take some action and because we have heard that Rite Aid is closing relatively quickly so you don’t want to put this off too long.

The first order of business is deciding what pharmacy you want to move your prescriptions to. There are a number of other pharmacies in our region. There is also the option of moving to mail order.

For this decision, I am actually going to suggest reviewing your insurance coverage. Each insurance company makes agreements and negotiates prices with each pharmacy chain. The insurance company then establishes a list of pharmacies that are “preferred.” These preferred pharmacies potentially give you reduced pricing on your prescription copays. The material that your insurance company sent to you should include a list of preferred pharmacies. If you can’t find that list, you have a couple of alternative ways of finding that information. First, you could call the insurance company using the number listed on the back of your insurance card. You could also use the Medicare.gov website to review your plan and the preferred pharmacies it offers you.

You will need to review that list and decide which pharmacy works best for you. In reviewing those alternative pharmacies, there is a lot to consider on top of your drug coverage. There’s also its location, hours of operation, delivery services, and other services and features provided at the pharmacy that are important to you.

Once you decide on a pharmacy, you then need to contact your prescribing physicians to let them know about this change of pharmacy. Many physician’s practices prefer that you use their patient portal to contact them with this type of information. If you don’t use their patient portal, you may want to go to the office to talk to them in person, or call the office to make this request.

It is important to be patient, as there will be a significant number of patients in our state going through this same change and the system will be overloaded for a couple of months with these requests. But you need to keep track of this transfer of information to be sure that it happens in a timely manner so that you don’t come up short of medications.

The next step is taking your insurance information to the new pharmacy you have chosen and give them that information to put on file. Don’t forget to give them your Medicare Identification, your Prescription Drug Coverage, and your EPIC card if you have one. Also if you fill some of your medications using something like GoodRx or another alternative, let them know that as well.

Another suggestion would be to look at your current medication supply. Determine if you need to fill any of your medications in the coming weeks and months. Remember that you can’t fill them too early, but you want to be sure you don’t run out of medications either. Usually there is a date on your prescription bottle that tells you when you can fill the prescription again. If that date is in the near future, you may want to fill medications as early as possible to be sure you aren’t without medication.

Maybe a positive side to this situation is that the staff from those Rite Aids will easily find jobs at the existing pharmacies, because we all know that pharmacies and the stores within them are short staffed. So my hope is that by transferring the staff from the Rite Aids that are closing to the existing pharmacies that are left, we will all have better staffed pharmacies and they’ll have a better ability to handle the work load that is demanded of them.

As you go through this process, try to be as patient as possible with everyone you speak with. Remember that there are many patients, clients, and customers doing the exact same thing and that everyone will have a significantly increased work load for a couple of months, until this situation settles down.