We have received many complaints from people who are compelled by their insurance companies to purchase their medication from mail-order pharmacies. One drawback of getting drugs by mail order is that they may sit for many hours on a freezing cold porch in the winter or in a sizzling mailbox in the summer.
Is Your Mailbox Climate-Controlled?
Many drugs are supposed to be kept at or near room temperature. Short periods of getting rather chilly or overheated usually aren’t a problem, but long hours could be. Even an hour or so out of the appropriate temperature zone can be dangerous for some liquid medicines such as insulin.
How Are Drugs Delivered to Pharmacies?
When we have written about this problem before (here and here), readers have asked, as Judy did:
“How are drugs delivered to pharmacies? Couldn’t the same thing happen during those deliveries?”
Another reader suggested that the same services mail order companies use to get medications to your home deliver prescription medications to pharmacies:
“It’s by UPS, FedEx, and USPS! I doubt many pharmacies have their stock delivered by “temperature or humidity controlled vehicles” on a continual basis.”
Pharmacy Owner Offers a Rebuttal:
Q. The person who wrote you that pharmacies receive their drug orders the same way mail order companies deliver to individuals (via UPS, FedEx, USPS) was mistaken.
My husband and I own an independent pharmacy. We receive our drug order daily via a courier service from our supplier. Any refrigerated items are in an insulated tote with ice packs, so they are indeed delivered in a temperature and humidity controlled vehicle.
A. Thank you for the clarification. What you describe is the correct way for drug delivery.
We hope that all pharmacies follow your good example. We suspect that mail order drug delivery cannot meet such rigorous standards.
There may be pharmacies that don’t get their medications by courier, but rather by trucks that have no climate control. It makes sense to check on the requirements for your particular medicine before you get your prescription filled. If it is not very sensitive to changes in temperature, the cost savings from mail order could make sense. But if it is, you may want to ask your local pharmacist how the drugs are delivered, so you can try to minimize the drug’s exposure to moisture, heat and cold.
