Doctors' offices are NOT pharmacies.

At long last a blow to dispensing docs and their enablers

In a ruling last week an appeals court in Florida ruled doctors offices are NOT pharmacies…that wildly obvious reality somehow had escaped the minds of the august leaders of the Sunshine State’s Department of Financial Services which had ruled that it was illegal for a work comp payor to refuse to pay for prescription drugs just because they got them from a doctor’s office.

The net effect is work comp payers no longer have to pay hugely inflated prices for drugs in what has been a decades-long scandal, costing Florida’s employers and taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars while enriching the entire dispensing physician industry.

Kudos to Publix, Zenith, Bridgefield, BusinessFirst and RetailFirst for their long and costly battle to undo what has been a stain on the Sunshine State for far too long.

The doc dispensing industry had been hugely successful in its lobbying efforts leading to laws and rules mandating payments to dispensers and forcing employers and taxpayers to pay dispensing physicians for drugs at prices much higher than pharmacies were paid.

In its ruling the Court stated:

To become a dispensing practitioner, a practitioner only needs to

register with their professional licensing board, pay a fee of less

than $100, and follow the rules as dictated in the statute. At most,

practitioners who register as dispensing practitioners have a

“dispensing practitioner license” but do not possess the license,

training, or credentials to be considered a licensed pharmacist.

What does this mean for you?

A victory in what will certainly be a never-ending battle - one that other employers and insurers must join in.