Faces of 340B: Care in the Wake of Destruction

by Admin | June 25, 2019 2:40 pm

June 25, 2019— For those who survived the devastation of Hurricanes Irma and Maria in the Caribbean in 2017, the next challenge came in finding the health care they needed. Thanks in large part to 340B, one clinic in Puerto Rico was able to step up and aid many of those affected by the disasters.

Puerto Rico CoNCRA is a community-based organization that is one of the largest clinics in the San Juan area dedicated to HIV prevention and treatment. Through its participation in the Ryan White Program, it also is eligible for 340B discounts, says Vivian Tamayo, MD, the medical director at the clinic.

Dr. Tamayo is the newest profile in our Faces of 340B[1] video series. She notes that program savings were crucial in enabling PR CoNCRA to provide care following the 2017 hurricanes. The 340B support, for instance, helped her and the other health providers care for refugees from neighboring islands whose homes were destroyed.

“We could provide services and medications for those patients who left their houses just with their clothes on and nothing else,” she says.

340B support also enabled PR CoNCRA to increase its mental health services after providers identified that as a priority in the wake of the hurricane destruction. The clinic extended the hours of its mental health providers to assist more victims of the storms.

For these reasons and more, rolling back 340B support would be “catastrophic” for an organization such as PR CoNCRA, Dr. Tamayo says. The clinic relies on program savings to fulfill its patient mission in both times of disaster and in ordinary times.

Check out Dr. Tamayo’s video profile[2] at our Faces of 340B website.

Source URL: https://340binformed.org/2019/06/faces-of-340b-care-in-the-wake-of-destruction/

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