CAMBRIA COUNTY, Pa (WJAC) \u2014 One of the owners of Martella\u2019s Pharmacies is speaking out on the pharmacy chain\u2019s ongoing legal battle with the PBM Express Scripts.<\/p>\n
Last week, Express Scripts made the decision to pull its network contract with Martella\u2019s Pharmacies.<\/p>\n
Our Emily Marines spoke to multiple individuals close to the situation to learn how Martella\u2019s is handling the ongoing dispute and its impact on customers.<\/p>\n
According to multiple sources close to the situation, Martella’s has continued to fill all prescriptions, as usual, over the course of the past week.<\/p>\n
However, since the pharmacy chain can no longer claim those scripts on insurance, Martella\u2019s is now faced with potential financial impacts of having to \u201ceat the costs\u201d of those prescriptions.<\/p>\n
According to several sources, Martella’s will continue to fill prescriptions as usual, but customers will likely have to rely on a co-pay or secondary insurance providers to pay for the prescriptions since the company can no longer submit claims to Express Scripts.<\/p>\n
Sources say it is unclear when a resolution could happen and claims that no one at Martella\u2019s was notified of the contract termination last week, stating that the timing was \u201csooner than expected.\u201d<\/p>\n
Martella’s, who was previously unable to publicly comment on the situation, said in a statement Wednesday that they are not going anywhere.<\/p>\n
Ownership also says it wants to dispel any rumors about going out of business, saying \u201cthey are here to stay for their employees, customers and the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sources close to Martella\u2019s say that as of right now, the pharmacy chain has not seen an impact in business.<\/p>\n
This has been an incredibly difficult situation for our customers, most especially our elderly population and our ailing customers in rural areas. As the media has been reporting, we have been finding ways to serve our customers. We are not going anywhere. We have many health plans that we do accept and many of our customers have alternative insurance options available to them. We are encouraging our customers to call their Martella\u2019s Pharmacy location if they have questions regarding their prescription drug coverage. Our pharmacists will walk them through their options because everyone\u2019s situation is different.To dispel any rumors, we are not going out of business. We are here to stay for our employees, our customers and our communities. For anyone who knows us, they know we will find a way to continue to service all your pharmacy needs as we have been for 60+ years.<\/p>\n
Director of Operations Kathleen Martella continues by explaining that the pharmacy accepts many health plans and many of their customers have alternative insurance options available to them.<\/p>\n
Ownership is also encouraging customers to call their Martella\u2019s pharmacy location if they have questions regarding their prescription drug coverage, adding that a pharmacist will walk them through their options.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CAMBRIA COUNTY, Pa (WJAC) \u2014 One of the owners of Martella\u2019s Pharmacies is speaking out on the pharmacy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261039,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[97,243],"class_list":{"0":"post-261038","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-medication"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}