Kroger Health, the healthcare division of The Kroger Co., and its Family of Pharmacies and Prime Therapeutics LLC (Prime), a diversified pharmacy benefit manager collectively owned by Blue Cross and Blue Shield Plans that serves more than 33 million people, announced a direct agreement for the Kroger Family of Pharmacies to remain in-network effective January 1, 2023.
“Kroger is always looking for new opportunities and collaborations to make Medicare more accessible, and our direct agreement with Prime delivers benefits for our customers and for the thousands of communities we operate in daily,” said Colleen Lindholz, president of Kroger Health. “We look forward to working collaboratively to improve the health outcomes of our collective customers by increasing health access, delivering pricing transparency and ensuring affordable prices.”
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“It was critical for Prime to maintain the Kroger Family of Pharmacies as an option for our members in our network of high-quality pharmacy providers given their strong record of meeting and exceeding Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) quality metrics,” said Dave Schlett, executive vice President, president, PBM solutions, Prime Therapeutics. “Prime and Kroger share a common focus on member-centered care and providing our members continued access to the Kroger Family of Pharmacies.”
This direct agreement demonstrates a continued commitment to provide millions of patients with quality, affordable healthcare services.
While the Kroger Family of Pharmacies will not be in the ESI network for 2023, it continues to participate in many other pharmacy benefit networks, for example the Prime network. In addition, people may continue to fill prescriptions at Kroger Family of Pharmacies through other options. For example, people may want to join the Kroger Rx Savings Club, use a third-party discount card or manufacturer coupon when eligible to purchase a drug, or pay the retail cash price.
Additional network information can be found at the following link: kroger.com/payorupdate.
What This Means for Medicare Part D Customers in 2023
The direct agreement with Prime will prevent disruption to Prime’s Medicare Part D members mitigating the end of year Kroger termination with Express Scripts while continuing health access, delivering pricing transparency and helping to ensure affordable prices.
The Kroger Family of Pharmacies remains in-network for Prime’s Medicare Part D Plan clients and nearly all national and regional Medicare Part D plans.
SOURCE: PR Newswire