Veterans in Pioneer Homes will get their medicines from VA

The state will also refund the money the affected veterans had to pay to fill prescriptions through the Pioneer Homes pharmacy, according to officials from the state Department of Health and Social Services.

The Pioneer Homes quit accepting medicine from the VA last April for veterans who need help from staff to take their pills. The decision affected about a dozen veterans in the Anchorage Pioneers' Home, and perhaps a couple of veterans at the Palmer home.

Pioneer Homes director Dave Cote said the VA medicine wasn't packaged in the right kind of packs to make sure staff could safely distribute it. The Pioneer Homes wanted the medicine to come in blister packs labeled with the patient's name, with foil on one side and plastic on the other and each pill ready to be popped out individually. That way it would be easy to tell if the pill had been administered.

But Cote said after a high-level meeting with Veterans Administration last week, it became clear "they could not be flexible. ... There was not anything they were going to do on their side of things."

Ken Strum, pharmacy chief for the Veterans Administration in Anchorage, said the VA doesn't have equipment needed to package medicine in blister packs as the Pioneer Homes wanted. And, Strum said, it would be against state regulation for the Pioneer Homes pharmacy to repackage in blister packs medicine it receives from the VA pharmacy.

So Cote and the Pioneer Homes nurses instead figured out the safest way to distribute VA medicine from the bottles it comes in, Cote said. Basically, they're going to be more careful.

The Pioneer Homes nursing staff will keep the pills in the original bottles, instead of transferring all of a veteran's pills into a pill box where all meds to be taken at a time would be mixed together. That's to prevent a problem in case certain prescriptions are discontinued, which happens often with older folks, Cote said.

Also, instead of allowing aides to dispense VA pills, nurses will do it, he said.

The dispute between the VA and the Pioneer Homes gained attention this fall after Bea Combs, stepdaughter of Pioneers Homes veteran Melvin Ertwine, went to a legislator's office seeking to get the free or low-cost medicines re-instated.

State Reps. Les Gara of Anchorage and Nancy Dahlstrom of Eagle River and Sen. Bill Wielechowski of Anchorage began sending letters and meeting with state administrators about it.

"I think it's a great solution," Wielechowski said Friday. "It was sort of two large bureaucracies clashing with each other. Somebody had to give."

The state was able to be "a little more nimble," he said. "One reason we were able to do it is it's a small number of people."

Find Rosemary Shinohara online at adn.com/contact/rshinohara or call her at 257-4340.