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HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson today announced the approval of novel projects at two groups of community health centers intended to make prescription drugs more readily available to safety-net patients and less costly.

In the first project, pharmacists at a central health center site in Spokane, Wash., will network with other health centers and use computer equipment to dispense prescription drugs through vending machines to patients at remote health clinics. The second project, operating from Ticonderoga, N.Y., will use multiple pharmacy contracts to lower drug prices and improve patients' access to prescription drugs and pharmacy services.

"These imaginative demonstrations offer solutions to two circumstances -- isolation and lack of competition -- that conspire to deprive uninsured and underserved Americans of the prescription medications they need at a fair price," Secretary Thompson said.

In Washington, the Community Health Association of Spokane (CHAS) will rely on a four-step process to send drugs through vending machines to patients at remote clinics:

• Health care providers at the clinics fax prescription orders to the central CHAS pharmacy.
• A pharmacist at the central facility receives the prescription and fills it via computer link to a locked vending machine in a secure area of the network clinics, where it is dispensed in a bottle.
• A pharmacy technician picks up the bottle, attaches a label, and delivers it to the waiting patient.
• The process may end at this point, or the patient may use videoconferencing equipment -- another element of the demo -- to receive counseling on proper drug usage from the pharmacist at the central CHAS facility.

CHAS will manage its four clinics in partnership with Native Health of Spokane, an urban Native American program, and Northeast Washington Health Programs, a community health center in Chewelah, Wash. The network will provide affordable medications to approximately 13,500 low-income or rural patients who otherwise would have had difficulty obtaining their prescription drugs.

In New York, the project managed by the Hudson Headwaters Health Network, a community health center serving the Ticonderoga area, will contract with multiple pharmacies to make medications and services more accessible to the patients served by the network's 11 clinics.

The two demonstration projects are part of a new initiative announced June 18 (www.hrsa.gov/Newsroom/releases/2001%20Releases/druginitiative2.htm) to help organizations that participate in the 340B drug discount program find creative ways to reduce administrative costs and improve access to prescription drugs for patients. Managed by HHS' Health Resources and Services Administration Office of Pharmacy Affairs, the 340B program requires drug manufacturers to sell drugs to specified safety-net health care providers at a discount rate determined by a formula in the legislation that created the program. Discounts average 25 percent to 40 percent on most drugs.

For a description of the initiative's requirements and review criteria, go to www.hrsa.gov/odpp and click on "What's New."

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