(Radio Iowa) – A small team is reporting huge success with a program that helps University of Iowa Health Care patients save money on their prescriptions. Last year, the U-I-H-C Medication Assistance Center saved thousands of uninsured or underinsured patients more than 69-million dollars. Wendy Ostrem is one of the center’s pharmacist financial counselors. “I work with a team of other pharmacists and social workers,” Ostrem says, “and as patients are identified here at University Hospitals as having financial concerns with their medications, we work to utilize the resources that we have to help them try to lower their costs.”

Some patients may not be able to afford co-payments of 50-dollars a month, and Ostrem says the center may find a grant to cover all or most of that cost. “We might be saving that patient over the course of a year $1,000 to $2,000,” she says, “but then there are these patients who need the expensive chemotherapy infusions that run $30,000 a month. We might be saving those patients over a quarter of a million dollars a year by getting that medication for them at no cost.” It’s an exceptionally rewarding job, Ostrem says, knowing you’re helping people financially while the medications help them physically.

“We’re not saving the hospital any money. We’re not receiving any money from any of these programs. It’s all completely patient savings,” Ostrem says. “At the end of the day, it’s a feel-good job. Patients are very appreciative of what we can do for them. You know that people are cutting down on doses or not taking their doses or trying to decide if they’re going to pay for food or they’re going to pay for medicine.”

The center is able to save money through free drug programs offered by pharmaceutical companies, as well as copay assistance programs and grants. Ostrem says there’s also SafeNet R-X, based in Grimes, a non-profit that’s main goal is to help Iowans to afford their medications. “The main way that they do that is by accepting donated medications,” she says. “They do have to be in date. They have to be sealed. They don’t do anything refrigerated and no controlled substances. And then they work with a network of partner pharmacies in the state of Iowa to dispense those medications to patients at no charge.”

Ostrem, who graduated from the U-I College of Pharmacy in 1986, says she’s seen remarkable changes in health care since she was a student on the Iowa City campus. While the program saved patients almost 70-million dollars last year, the savings was just under eight-million dollars a decade ago. She says much of that is due to the rising cost of pharmaceuticals.