The Veterans Administration’s Office of Rural Health “Rural Connection” newsletter reports that the VA and the Indian Health Service (IHS) are partnering, communicating, and encouraging the sharing of best pharmacy practices across their pharmacy programs.
One partnership involves joint contracting for pharmaceutical products through the VA National Acquisition Center (NAC) particularly via the “Pharmaceutical Prime Vendor” contract which supports VA and HIS.
This contract has total annual sales exceeding $4 billion and has an estimated cost avoidance of over $380 million annually. In addition, the VA and IHS collaborate on their respective formulary processes and clinical pharmacy programs.
Another major initiative involves the use of the VA Consolidated Mail Outpatient Pharmacy (CMOP) program to help support participating IHS medical centers and clinics. The pilot program initiated in 2010 under a VA/IHS Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) allows for tribal partnerships.
The partnerships enabled 105,000 prescriptions to be dispensed during the second quarter in FY 2014. Total prescriptions for this partnership has grown from 2000 prescription in FY 2010 to over 400,000 prescriptions for FY 2014. To date, this partnership has dispensed prescriptions supporting 26 IHS clinical sites electronically connected to CMOP.
For more information, go to www.ruralhealth.va.gov.