Already fighting for her life, one mistake at the hands of the PBM nearly killed her.

Carla, a colorectal cancer patient, was prescribed a common oral medication that has been on the market for nearly 20 years. Carla’s PBM mandated that she fill the prescription at a large, well-known specialty pharmacy. Each time, the pharmacy had the medicine auto-shipped to Carla, with no patient contact or instructions.

Carla’s experience was the straw that finally broke the camel’s back, and the practice established its own oncology pharmacy with a pharmacist-managed program.

Carla’s oncologist prescribed the medication to be taken in rounds with the following specific instructions: ‘two weeks on, one week off. ‘The PBM mail-order pharmacy, unfortunately, neglected to include the ‘one week off’ part of the instructions on the label. After her third refill, Carla ended up in a hospital’s intensive care unit, fighting for her life.

Carla’s experience was the straw that finally broke the camel’s back, and the practice established its own oncology pharmacy with a pharmacist-managed program. However, many of their patients are still required to purchase their drugs from PBM-mandated, mail-order specialty pharmacies.

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PBM pharmacies have been repeatedly documented making life-threatening mistakes; yet patients are forced to remain with them, unable to receive their medication at their physician-managed pharmacy, where they would receive the close, personalized care and monitoring that would easily prevent such potentially fatal occurrences from happening.