The new Medicare drug program is off to a shaky start as Denver pharmacists say they are struggling to fill senior citizens’ prescriptions.
“I had to send one guy back home three times” because he did not have the right ID card, said Catherine Jackson, a pharmacy technician at Cornell Prescription Pharmacy in Denver.
“But he found it,” she said. “A lot of the older people, they have no clue what’s going on.”
Poor elderly people, who previously had their drugs covered under Medicaid, are most likely to encounter snags, said Val Kalnins, executive director of the Colorado Pharmacists Society.
About 37,000 Colorado low-income elderly and disabled were automatically enrolled in the Medicare drug plans – offered by private health-insurance companies – before it began Sunday.
Many seniors, however, don’t know to which of the 17 plans operating in Colorado they’ve been assigned, area pharmacists say.
Some have not received identification cards and others don’t know they’ve changed plans at all, the pharmacists say.
Julie Reiskin, executive director of the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition, was working Thursday to get a prescription filled for a stroke victim who was turned away.
“She was auto-enrolled, but she doesn’t have a card,” Reiskin said. “Even going a day without her medicine would be totally horrible.”
Pharmacists nationwide have been unable to get eligibility information by phone or computer, waiting hours on hold with insurance companies, according to Susan Winkler, American Pharmacists Association vice president for policy and communications.
“A number of them are giving a two- or three-day supply while they try and figure out the insurance issue,” Winkler said.
Because of a late December surge in enrollment, not all Medicare beneficiaries who signed up for a drug plan have been entered into a computerized database or been issued cards, said Larry Kocot, senior policy adviser with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
“While we’ve made significant progress this week, our work has just begun,” he said during a conference call with reporters Thursday.
Medicare is aware of pharmacists’ inability to get timely and accurate information, Kocot said.
Additional staff have been added to help lines and computer-system delays have been eliminated, Kocot said, and a letter was sent Wednesday to insurance companies urging them to improve customer service and technical support.
“We need you to … shore up systems … to ensure all beneficiaries get their prescriptions filled,” the letter states.
United Health Group and its PacifiCare Health Systems subsidiary – which together offer five prescription plans in Colorado – have increased staffing levels and customer-service line capacity, said Tyler Mason, a PacifiCare spokesman.
Any senior in a PacifiCare or United plan who can’t get filled prescriptions covered should still buy them and send the receipts in for reimbursement, Mason said.
“Nobody should be walking away from the pharmacy sick and without the drug they need,” he said.
Medicare’s regional office in Denver is tracking problems and, as of Wednesday, received approximately 64 complaints, said spokesman Michael Fierberg
“We are updating the system every hour, so we expect the problems to abate,” Fierberg said.
A hotline set up by Colorado’s Medicaid program has received 1,400 calls since November, when enrollment in the Medicare drug plan began, said Rhonda Bentz, spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Healthcare Policy and Financing.
State Medicaid officials will attempt to work with the Medicare agency to resolve patient problems if they call the hotline, Bentz said.
Staff writer Marsha Austin can be reached at 303-820-1242 or maustin@denverpost.com.
