Since its inception,CAP has helped participants obtain over $1 million worth of drugs through its prescription assistance program. This amounted to over $1,000 each participant was able to save in pharmaceutical cost for the year, making a vast difference in his or her quality of life.

Doctors will tell you that medication not taken as prescribed are of little value. Indeed, participants who struggle financially on a daily basis are often faced with the dilemma of purchasing medication and doing without other basic necessities, or leaving their prescription unfilled. Some participants will even reduce their dosage of medication just to make it last longer. Either choice made results in health risk and reduction of their quality of life. That’s why CAP established a prescription assistance program to help meet this growing need.

With a call for prescription assistance, a CAP worker interviews the person making the request to learn which drugs he or she needs. The worker looks up each drug in catalogues from the pharmaceutical companies to see if the drug is available at no cost, and how to access it. Generally, after filling out the proper forms and obtaining the proper signatures, the participant can receive a three-month supply of the drug.

Because the program requires different forms for every drug, the amount of paperwork for the CAP worker can be staggering. For that reason, workers can only carry an average of 300 people, a fraction of the people who are eligible to receive drugs under the guidelines of the pharmaceutical companies.

CAP workers have trained the families of some participants to take over the form management, and personnel from other agencies have also asked for training.

The prescription assistance program has had a spin-off benefit for others as well. The Jackson County office has help in doing this work from people who receive assistance from the Kentucky Temporary Assistance Program (KTAP), who must work thirty hours each week to continue receiving benefits. “They help us file charts and keep the office clean and in order,” Zayda said.

Because of the growing demand, and CAP’s willingness to assign workers to the prescription assistance program, it is believed that the amount of drugs CAP can help participants access will continue to increase. The program works, not only in helping participants acquire needed medication, but also in enabling the medication to be taken as prescribed. And that makes a difference in their quality of life