About 2,000 independent pharmacies will rejoin Tricare's network next month, the company in charge of administering the pharmacy benefits confirmed Friday.
“Since we issued the new solicitation on Dec. 1, we are pleased that more than 2,000 pharmacies have accepted the terms and will rejoin the Tricare network, and other pharmacies still have several more days to respond,” Express Scripts spokesperson Justine Sessions said in an email.
That brings back a fraction of the nearly 15,000 pharmacies that left the network in October, which prompted outrage from advocacy groups, lawmakers and patients.
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Pharmacies that accepted the contract will be back in the network Jan. 15. The deadline for responding to the contract offer is Thursday.
Many of the 14,963 retail pharmacies that were dropped from the network Oct. 24 declined the contract to stay on because of lowered reimbursement rates they said would mean they had to operate at a loss. They also said they were blindsided by the October date, thinking they would stay in the network until the end of the year.
Other pharmacies were unaware their wholesaler or agency that represents them in negotiations had declined the contract on their behalf.
The reduction affected an estimated 400,000 Tricare beneficiaries, the Defense Health Agency told the Congressional Research Service in a report released last…
