A report issued by the Brookings Institution states that an ongoing reorganization of the U.S. Post Office’s mail processing network could create slower and less predictable medication delivery, especially for communities dependent on mail services for prescription access. It found that around 3.7 million Medicare-eligible Americans live in communities that lack strong retail pharmacy access and rely heavily on mail-order prescriptions that could see their deliveries impacted by the restructuring effort.
In its report, Brookings noted the importance of mail-order prescriptions for medication adherence, stating that for communities most dependent on mail services for prescription access, "even small increases in delivery time can disrupt medication adherence and continuity of care. In this way, delivery speed is not merely a performance metric: It is a determinant of medication adherence and population health."
The think tank’s findings come from an analysis of 2019 prescription transaction data for asthma and diabetes medications in combination with measures of retail pharmacy access, reliance on mail-order prescriptions, and exposure to the restructuring effort.
Part of the larger Delivering for America program that is aimed at streamlining USPS operations, the Regional Transportation Optimization initiative entails transferring mail that was being processed locally to larger, regional facilities, while several local post offices switch to a single daily collection schedule for outgoing mail. However, the Brookings report highlights another analysis conducted by the Postal Regulatory Commission, an oversight body, which found the service changes could cause uneven delivery slowdowns across the country, especially in rural areas.
Read the report here.
