The AU Health Employee Pharmacy will soon make it even easier for employees to have their prescriptions filled.
Beginning in August, Pharmacy will offer a courier service to employees at all of Augusta University’s off-site locations.
“We did a survey a little while back. Not a lot of our offsite employees are actually using the Employee Pharmacy,” said Dr. Rashad Darby, manager of the Community Pharmacy at the AU Medical Center. “Some of the reasoning was just convenience, location, parking, etc., so we wanted to make it much easier.”
Currently, prescriptions are filled in the Employee Pharmacy on the first floor of the Children’s Hospital of Georgia. This requires an AU Health employee who works off campus to drive to the medical center, find parking, and come inside to the pharmacy. With the new service, a courier will bring prescriptions to a drop-off point near their workplace one designated day a week. The employee will sign for the prescription then. Payment and health insurance information will be obtained during the fill/refill process.
Filling prescriptions through the Employee Pharmacy is less expensive for AU employees than filling them at retail pharmacies such as CVS or Walgreens. Darby said when employees visit an AU Health doctor at an AU Health location and have a prescription filled by the Employee Pharmacy, it saves both the employee and the health system money versus visiting a non-AU Health doctor and retail pharmacy.
“Essentially, it costs the health system more for us to fill a prescription outside of the health system than inside the health system,” he said.
To fill a prescription and have it delivered, call the Employee Pharmacy at 706-723-0900 or email employeeRX@augusta.edu. At the employee’s request, the pharmacist can move prescriptions to the Employee Pharmacy from an employee’s current pharmacy, or the employee may have his or her doctor issue a new prescription. Employees can let the pharmacist know at the time of the call that they’d like to have the prescription delivered.
The program began July 1 with a soft launch to the Annex. Beginning in August, the program will expand to the AU Health building at 699 Broad Street, the Morris Museum of Art Building off 10th Street, the Grovetown office off of Robinson Avenue, and then to several other locations including the Summerville Campus off Walton Way.
