Every year tens of thousands of doses of prescription drugs are thrown away by patients who have been discharged from rehabilitation facilities, nursing homes and hospitals. One lawmaker wants to find another way to make use of the medication that is still good.
Rep. Patty Hymanson, a Democrat from York and a retired doctor, is proposing legislation to require the state pharmacy board to come up with rules to allow unused medications to be donated to low-income patients.
“If you are being discharged from a place that has them as blister packs, you could say please donate these and then those could be donated to this pharmacy so you wouldn’t have to go home with them,” she says.
Hymanson says people being discharged from a medical stay often throw plenty of useful medications away. She says drugs are often dispensed in individual, sealed doses that make them safe to be repurposed at a pharmacy.
“I would hope that the pharmaceutical industry and any other person who is in opposition would help us find a way forward to use these medications that would ordinarily just be thrown out,” she says.
