MedWest-Harris and MedWest-Swain partner with Good Samaritan Clinic on $75,000 grant for newly merged Medication Assistance Program

9/25/2012

MedWest-Harris and MedWest-Swain partner with Good Samaritan Clinic on $75,000 grant for newly merged Medication Assistance Program 

Sylva and Bryson City, N.C. –MedWest-Harris and MedWest-Swain have partnered with the Good Samaritan Clinic of Jackson County to garner a $75,000 grant from the N.C. Office of Rural Health and Community Care to support the community’s newly merged Medication Assistance Program. 

The hospitals and the nonprofit clinic have had their own programs for years that have helped uninsured people with low incomes obtain the medications they need and otherwise could not get, said Luanna Easton, chief operating officer for MedWest-Harris and MedWest-Swain. 

“We felt like it would be very beneficial if we could merge those efforts and do a better job for the community,” Easton said. 

Rebecca D. Olson, executive director of the Good Samaritan Clinic of Jackson County, said the decision was made this year to merge the Medication Assistance Programs so they will be under the administration and supervision of the clinic, a volunteer-based, primary care, free clinic in Sylva that serves uninsured adults from Jackson County and counties to the west who are 18 to 65 years old, have income below 175 percent of the federal poverty level and are ineligible for Medicaid. 

The Medication Assistance Program involves pharmaceutical companies providing free medicines to uninsured patients with low incomes who meet specific guidelines. 

The merger of the programs will take place this month, Olson said, with the $75,000 in grant money being allocated to help fund the salaries of three personnel currently trained to help people apply for medication assistance. The Medication Assistance Program does not generate revenues and does not involve any sort of staff reimbursements. 

“We feel that merging the programs will allow us to be more efficient,” Olson said. “We’ll work together so that we can get applications processed more quickly and meet more patients’ needs.” 

More than 600 individuals are being served by the current programs and are receiving medications with an average, wholesale total value of more than $1 million. 

Because the Medication Assistance Program involves following a lot of regulations and because there is a lot of clinical information that has to be gathered, Easton said MedWest-Harris and MedWest-Swain will provide the program with the resources of a pharmacist. 

“One of biggest benefits of the Medication Assistance Program is being able to help those patients who couldn’t otherwise afford those expensive medications on an ongoing basis,” Easton said. “It’s in the interest of the well-being of the entire community to keep as many people as possible healthy.”