New Member Choice Center Saves Your Patients Time and Money

TRICARE beneficiaries who have been thinking about signing up for TRICARE’s mail-order pharmacy now have another reason to make the switch from retail purchases to the convenience of ordering by mail.

With the introduction of the Member Choice Center (MCC) in August 2007, all it takes for TRICARE beneficiaries to start receiving prescription medications by mail is a phone call or a click of the mouse. Also, military family members and retirees can use the MCC to update prescription information and get answers to pharmacy questions.

Beneficiaries don’t have to download forms or wait to have forms mailed; they can log on to www.express-scripts.com/TRICARE and complete the registration form or call the MCC at 1-877-363-1433 to switch from the retail program to the mail-order pharmacy.

When a TRICARE beneficiary calls the MCC, a patient care advocate from Express Scripts, Inc., TRICARE’s pharmacy contractor, will verify their information and walk them through the conversion process. To help facilitate the process, Express Scripts may contact you to have the beneficiaries’ prescriptions transferred to the mail-order program. On the MCC Web site, beneficiaries can also fill out an online enrollment form and convert their existing medications to home delivery.

The mail-order pharmacy can save TRICARE beneficiaries as much as 66 percent on maintenance medications for conditions such as high blood pressure, asthma or diabetes. The beneficiary receives up to a 90-day supply of their generic medications for $3, which is what they would pay for a 30-day supply at a retail pharmacy. If you prescribe a brand-name medication, the copayment for a 90-day supply is just $9.

Some of the benefits of using TRICARE’s mail-order pharmacy include:

• Free standard shipping of medications directly to beneficiaries’ homes
• Ordering refills online, by phone or by mail
• Each prescription checked by a pharmacist for accuracy and potential drug interactions
• Pharmacists available 24 hours a day, every day, to answer beneficiaries’ questions

The Department of Defense (DoD) saves money when beneficiaries use the mail-order pharmacy. The DoD pays 30 percent to 40 percent less for prescriptions filled through the mail-order service versus retail pharmacies. The savings can be substantial. By transferring just one percent of prescriptions from the retail pharmacy to the mail-order pharmacy, the DoD would save $24 million a year. Savings like this help keep the benefit affordable for military families.