November 21, 2016 - The Shelby County Commissioners approved canvassing the votes from the recent November 8 election during their Monday, November 21, 2016 meeting and discussed an alternate method of indigent pharmaceutical management.
Allison Harbison, Shelby County Judge, stated there are 15,130 registered voters and 9,137 votes were cast.
A motion carried to accept the results and canvass the votes.
A contract with a pharmacy benefit management to secure prescription management for indigent healthcare was up for consideration by the commissioners as, according to Judge Harbison, the previous method of providing prescriptions recently came to an abrupt end.
"We've been using Brookshire Brothers and while I was out of town last week they called Cindy [Clark], who administers the indigent healthcare program and told us they were not going to honor our prescriptions anymore," said Judge Harbison.
Clark explained the phone call was received last Thursday, November 18, and she began trying to find someone else to honor their needs. She said at this time Blount Pharmacy in Joaquin agreed to fill the prescriptions and even said they would be willing to provide the service on a long-term basis; however, the pharmacy is not centrally located and Clark said a lot of the people in need of the indigent assistance are homeless and without mode of transport.
It was discovered by Clark, other counties use a pharmacy benefit management program, which she says is not an expense to the county.
"I talked to other counties that use it, there's no cost. They do all of the middle work, they pay the bill, they post it into an account so they can send it to me and I can put it into our account. We just reimburse them," said Clark.
Representatives of other counties Clark has spoken with said their prescription cost has even decreased with the assistance of the program. She said they have contracts with entities such as CVS and Wal Mart which have provided discounts due to the volume of prescriptions that go through the program.
Gary Rholes, County Attorney, was asked his opinion of the contract and he said one concern for him is the language in the contract which indemnifies and holds harmless the program against any loss, award, or lawsuit claim.
"A county cannot indemnify a private entity, because your incurring an unfunded and unknown potential liability," said Rholes.
He said if the county does agree to the contract they would have to find some way to work around that portion of the contract.
A motion was carried to table the contract until next Monday giving Rholes time to investigate further.
Judge Harbison said the county pays Medicaid rates and Brookshire Brothers no longer wanted to honor those rates.
A motion carried to adjourn the meeting at 9:43am.
Agenda items approved during the meeting include: 1. Pay monthly expenses. 2. Canvass votes of the November 8th General Election 3. Adjourn. Agenda items tabled during the meeting include: 1. Contract with pharmacy benefit management to secure prescription management for Indigent Care Program.
