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Pharmacist warns specialty and mail-order pharmacy limits would harm rural and complex-care patients
Summary
Johnny Garcia, a pharmacist with 20 years of experience, told the committee that specialty and mail-order pharmacies provide high-touch services — benefits verification, clinical assessment, care coordination and financial assistance — and said restricting those operations could cause rural and homebound patients to lose access to critical medications.
Dr. Johnny Garcia, a pharmacist with experience in retail, mail and specialty pharmacies, described the seven-step specialty pharmacy workflow and argued those services provide clinical oversight, care coordination and financial assistance that many patients — particularly in rural areas — rely on.
Garcia used a personal example of his grandparents in a rural town who benefited from home delivery and said removing mail-order or specialty pharmacy options would leave similar patients without medications or supports. Citing industry modeling, he said that for certain therapies "1 in 6 patients would stop taking their medications if there wasn't a loss of access or an issue with their pharmacy location going away," and he tied that risk to increased hospitalizations and poorer outcomes if access is disrupted.
Garcia emphasized that specialty pharmacies offer 24/7 pharmacist access, infusion coordination, proactive refill outreach and links to manufacturer financial assistance programs; he warned that those services are not easily replicated in every local retail pharmacy.
