Administration’s Patient Medication Assistance Program (PMAP) won an Innovation Award at Harris Health’s Fifth Annual Innovation Summit.
“We’re excited to step outside from behind the scenes and share the work we’re proud of,” says Shahana Quadri, pharmacy operations manager, Patient Financial Services.
The PMAP team within the Department of Patient Financial Services helps provide free medication to Harris Health’s uninsured and underinsured patients. Until recently, this effort was focused primarily on medications for outpatients because of limitations with pharmaceutical company programs.
“No process existed for inpatient medication assistance,” Quadri says. “Therefore, the PMAP team explored other avenues of obtaining medications to offset pharmaceutical costs and receive medications for free for our indigent patients.”
With the continuous rise of pharmaceutical costs, Tina Strawn, administrative director, Patient Financial Services, recognized and supported an opportunity to improve service for patients and save on high-dollar drugs through pharmaceutical companies that offer inpatient patient assistance programs.
“The PMAP team was not only able to get medications for qualified outpatients within 365 days of service, but also had the unique opportunity to recover certain medications within the same time frame for inpatients,” Quadri says. “I’m so happy we can help our uninsured and underinsured patients who sometimes cannot afford certain medications.”
In comparison to the previous year’s recovery of $44M, the PMAP team was projected to recover an additional $4.8M worth of free medications with these new inpatient programs. The PMAP team exceeded their $48.8M recovery goal and closed out this past fiscal year with recovering $50.9M worth of free medications for our patients.
“A lot of PMAP team members came back with this year’s innovation message and started thinking, “What can we do next year?’,” Quadri says. “It’s amazing how a message like that can motivate you.”