Advocacy Partnership Stops Rejection of PA Prescriptions at CVS

CVS to Solve Prescription Compliance Issues and Avoid Disruption in Service

December 18, 2018

Last week, AAPA Advocacy staff spoke to CVS Caremark Corporation and CVS Health regarding recent rejection of PA prescriptions by CVS pharmacies. The collective efforts of AAPA, individual PAs, and health systems helped to bring about a change in CVS’ prescription procedures.

According to CVS, electronic health record issues complicated compliance for individual pharmacists and for CVS. In addition, the rejection of PA-generated prescriptions was due in part to a “lack of education on the part of pharmacists” regarding state law and regulatory requirements. As a result, pharmacists individually requested information “above and beyond” what is required by statute or rule such as the inclusion of a physician’s NPI number, for example.

Based upon the information CVS received from AAPA leadership and staff, health systems, and individual PAs about the confusion and disruption in patient care caused by their software enhancement, the corporation realizes that it must craft a solution that will not only allow them to solve their compliance issues but also avoid disruption in service for providers and patients. To that end, after the holidays, CVS will be creating a new plan to achieve these goals. They will perform the necessary outreach about next steps and solutions to address the challenge with which they have been presented without disrupting PA prescribing.

CVS stated that relationships and alignment with organizations like AAPA are important to the corporation and reemphasized that it was not their intent to create the confusion or disruption that many PAs and patients experienced.

While PAs and their patients should no longer experience disruptions in care at the present time, AAPA will remain vigilant about this issue and continue to monitor and serve as a resource to CVS.

Consistent with AAPA policy and Model State Legislation, AAPA staff has long worked with state chapters and suggested that provisions requiring that a physician’s name be associated with a prescription written by a PA be repealed from state law. However, twenty-six states and the District of Columbia require that some physician information be included on a PA-generated prescription. State chapters are encouraged to work to repeal these requirements.

More Resources
PA Prescription Requirements