To whom it may concern,

Please consider the banning of transfer incentives. This practice of incentivizing patients to change pharmacies multiple times solely based on coupon accumulation, is not only embarrassing for the profession but also opens us to unsafe medication practices. There is a potential for transcribing errors and also patients may accumulate unnecessary prescriptions solely based on financial outcome (ex. A patient buys unneeded $4 prescription because can get $25 coupon). The burden it places on pharmacies continues to create an unsafe working place. I cannot think of any other medical practice that give incentives for switching practices.

Please consider that this practice continues the public impression that pharmacies are equivalent to Cellular plans or Car insurance instead of as hospitals or medical practices. We should behave as professionals if we hope to be thought of as such in the public eye. Please end the gimmicks of transfer coupons.

Thank you.

Patient safety is jeopardized by incentivizing prescription transfers.  Patients end up with multiple pharmacies, each with a partial list of medications, and without a complete list, pharmacies can miss drug interactions and duplications of therapy.  Although every attempt is made to ensure accurate transfer of information, each transfer does introduce an opportunity for transcription error.  In addition, transfers done solely for the sake of a coupon add a significant and unnecessary burden to an already heavy workload. 

We know that the best practice is to have coordinated care where all the players (doctors, pharmacists, nurses, patients, etc) have complete and accurate information, and the practice of encouraging prescription transfers through coupons and other incentives completely undermines this ideal.  

I am against incentives to transfer prescriptions. Pharmacist are here to help protect the public by looking for interactions of drugs and by knowing the patient and the medications they are taking.  Every time you transfer a prescription you are adding another layer of chance that a interaction with some of the medicine they are already taking will be missed. Also, the prescription being transfered may be misinterpreted by the other pharmacy.   To have people move prescriptions around from pharmacy to pharmacy because of a coupon offer is just adding another layer for mistakes to happen. Please consider that coupons put  an added stess level on the Pharmacists, who are here to protect the public. 

This is one of the most dangerous things that are allowed and endorsed by the Virginia State Board of Pharmacy.

It has patiienrs transfereing prescriptions that they really d not need just to get a gift certificate and encourages patients to poly- pharmacy.  Many of these prescriptions are not run on insurance because they are cheaper on the  store plan so therefore no record of what the patient is taken is available to the pharmacy.

The duty of the Board is to protect the welfare and safety of the consumer. I beleive that the NABP does not endorse coupons .

Coupons and gift cards also can not be used for prescriptions only on other store goods so no real bendfit that out weighs the danger.

Coupons have no place in our profession and should have been addressed long ago.

Promotions end for consumers who transfer prescriptions

By Laura Gunderson | The Oregonian/OregonLive 
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on July 21, 2012 at 3:00 PM, updated July 21, 2012 at 3:22 PM

View full sizeLaura Gunderson/The OregonianPharmacies in Oregon can no longer offer deals to customers who transfer prescriptions. Such promotions, offering free gas, groceries and gift cards, gained popularity in recent years. However, local pharmacists said that when customers constantly switched prescriptions it became difficult for them to track what drugs they were taking and how they would interact.

In the past few years, many consumers have become expert pharmacy hoppers. 

If Walgreens offered a $25 gift card for transferring a prescription, off they'd trot to Walgreens. When Safeway made a similar deal a few months later, they'd switch their regular prescription to the grocer. The promotions were plentiful, offered by such big players as Fred Meyer, Target and Rite Aid -- each offering a range of extras, from free groceries to gasoline gift cards. 

But in Oregon, such hopping has been halted. 

The Oregon Board of Pharmacy voted last month to fine or revoke the licenses of pharmacies that offer promotions encouraging prescription-holders to switch. It also forbids retailers from guarantees on how quickly prescriptions will be ready -- programs that sometimes resulted in varying "punishments" for pharmacy employees when deadlines weren't met. 

The changes were spurred by a survey the state board offered to its 5,700 licensed pharmacists last summer. The board was surprised when 1,300 responded online and another 500 sent in written responses, all sharing their concerns about unsafe working conditions that they felt put patients at risk. 

"Every time a pharmacist dispenses a prescription, they review the patient's list of drugs to be sure there are no inconsistencies and that the new drug won't interact with another," said Gary Schnabel, executive director of the Oregon Pharmacy Board and past president of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy. 

"Every time a consumer switches pharmacies it breaks that chain," he said. "And every time you break that chain, a patient is more at risk." 

Transfer offers became common and quite popular over the past few years, although Schnabel said he's not seen any data outlining the number of consumers who participated in them locally. 

As with other deals through the recession, cash-strapped consumers welcomed ways to offset prescription costs with the variety of bonuses. So-called "mommy bloggers," who often share money-saving tips, regularly highlighted prescription-switching deals. One site that collects information geared for women readers recently included this "tip": 

"Whenever Target runs their prescription promotion, my mom gets extra coupons from her friends and family. She has their prescriptions filled using the coupon, which gives her a $10 gift card for each prescription... The promotions are a great way to help your dollars go further." 

Schnabel said that during hearings on the issue he heard of a consumer who kept filling a prescription that was no longer needed to take advantage of the promotions. 

In general the programs were offered at larger retail pharmacies. Independents, which make up about 200 of the 750 retail pharmacies statewide, didn't typically offer the transfer deals, Schnabel said. 

Signs went up recently at Walgreens warning pharmacy customers that it could no longer honor its $25 transfer coupons. Other retailers such as Fred Meyer, which offered such deals a few times a year, will simply stop the promotions. 

Fred Meyer spokeswoman Melinda Merrill said the grocer will continue its practice of rewarding loyalty-card holders with points toward gas discounts each time they fill prescriptions. 

"These retailers are creative and they can still do all kinds of marketing around rewarding those who stick around," Schnabel said. "The point of this rule is not to rein in what businesses are doing, we want them to be healthy, too -- just not at the expense of the public interest."