Virginia General Assembly Approves 2013-14 Budget

This week, the General Assembly approved the State budget for the 2013-14 fiscal year.  All items related to pharmacy have been included in the final budget.  Those items are:

• Transparency requirement for future contract administration of the State Employee health insurance program
• Prohibits the establishment of a retail maintenance network for maintenance drugs for the State Employee health insurance program 
• Creation of a Medication Therapy Management pilot program for the State Employee health insurance program
• Restoring funding for the Pharmacy Connection program
• Pharmacy Connect provides access to free prescription drugs, for adults without drug coverage, from participating pharmaceutical companies in Southwest Virginia
• Adds behavioral health drugs to the Medicaid Preferred Drug List (PDL)
• Behavioral health drugs were scheduled to be added to the Medicaid PDL in fiscal year 2014.  This amendment adds those drugs to the PDF one year early starting in 2013

 We will release more information once it is available on the MTM pilot program for the State Employees.