The partnership program of Pharmacy Connect of Southwest Virginia has accessed over $83 million dollars of free medication for the region’s uninsured adults over the past seven years. Funding for this program comes from the Virginia General Assembly.

MEOC’s partners in this program are Clinch River Health Services, Cumberland Plateau Health District, Junction Center for Independent Living, LENOWISCO Health District, St. Mary’s Health Wagon, Stone Mountain Health Services, Southwest Virginia Community Health Systems (Tazewell Community Health), The Virginia Department For The Aging and the Virginia Health Care Foundation.  Mountain Empire Older Citizens, Inc. serves as administrator and fiscal agent for the partnership. 

Pharmacy Connect of Southwest Virginia serves uninsured, medically indigent adults of all ages in the counties of Lee, Wise, Scott, Dickenson, Buchanan, Tazewell, and Russell and the City of Norton in the far southwestern end of Virginia by providing help in accessing the free Indigent Patient Assistance Programs of over 100 national pharmaceutical companies. This assistance is available to adults of ALL AGES.

The indigent program of each pharmaceutical company is a complex and time consuming system to navigate and persons need help in navigating the system, particularly elderly persons, persons with disabilities, persons with literacy problems, and persons without access to a computer or who are computer illiterate.

Pharmacy Connect of Southwest Virginia uses the software developed by the LENOWISCO Health District and later adopted by the Virginia Health Care Foundation. The software actually downloads the myriad of varying forms specific to each company along with the specific eligibility guidelines for each company. Each pharmaceutical company has different eligibility guidelines and all medications are not available.  It is not unusual for persons to have several prescriptions and for each medication to be manufactured by a different company.