A recent decision by a Prairie North Health Region evaluation committee could result in trouble for the Cut Knife Pharmacy.
In order to deliver medication services to long term care facilities, the PNHR relies on contracted, private pharmacy service providers, Vice-President Finance and Operations Derek Miller told the Regional Optimist Tuesday. Every five years, the PNHR re-evaluates the contracts and goes to market to find they what the PNHR considers the best agreements.
The process begins with a request for proposals, which is posted on the government website for public procurement, SaskTenders. Winter of 2017 is when the evaluation committee began reviewing the proposals for packaging and distribution of daily prescription drugs to long-term care facilities.
Dana Karlson owns pharmacies in Cut Knife and Turtleford, towns that each have a long-term care facility. Cut Knife Pharmacy provides medication to the Cut Knife Health Complex, while the Turtleford location provides medication to the Riverside Health Complex and the Lady Minto Health Care Centre in Edam.
Karlson, along with other pharmacies in the area, submitted proposals in hopes of earning the contract.
Miller said the evaluation committee, which determines who earns the contract, consisted of “representation from across the health region,” such as facility managers, pharmacy, and procurement experts.
The committee’s criteria for considering proposals were professional resident care services, medication distribution, accessibility, participation in stewardship of medications, and resident costs.
To fulfill the medication distribution criteria, Karlson said he offered to buy machines that distribute pills in Cut Knife and Turtleford. Karlson said he also offered to increase clinical services by having “an extra pharmacist come out to do more clinical services and service every day.”
“I was pretty confident I was going to keep it [the contract].”
Karlson said he found out at the end of July that he didn’t get the contract. The winning bid for the medication providers of the long-term care homes in Cut Knife and Edam was Battleford Drug Mart, while Family Pharmacy in Lloydminster will supply Turtleford. Karlson’s contract with PNHR ends in October.
Karlson said losing the contracts would affect the Cut Knife pharmacy.
“You need a certain volume to pay your bills, so this is going to affect that, which could affect the pharmacy being there, which could affect the hours,” Karlson said.
Whether or not the Cut Knife pharmacy will still be profitable after the contract ends, Karlson said, “We’ll have to wait and see.”
A Facebook post by the Cut Knife pharmacy has attracted social media attention. According to the post, there are petitions at the Cut Knife and Turtleford pharmacies to keep the local pharmacies as the medication providers of long-term care facilities in the area.
The Town of Cut Knife issued a statement on Aug. 15.
“We are very concerned about the awarding of the contract to supply the prescription needs of the patients in the long-term health care facility in Cut Knife to a non-local pharmacy,” the statement says.
The statement offers evaluations of each of the five criteria, and concludes “in summary, we as the community do not feel that true consultation has been done.”
Karlson said the rationale for awarding the contract to pharmacies outside Cut Knife and Turtleford has been unclear to him.
Miller said he couldn’t say what criteria influenced the committee’s decision.
“I can’t really comment. I know you’re talking about the one centre [Cut Knife] in particular and I don’t think I’m in a position to comment on the results of the evaluation for that particular proposal.”
“The competitive process that we went through does have certain parameters in terms of confidentiality, and we’re not able to share any information about specific bidders’ proposals. Certainly individual bidders can share what they proposed but we’re not able to disclose that. We can’t go into any details as to why one bidder was selected over another specific centre.”
Miller said the resident’s cost criteria, the cost of pills that residents of long-term care facilities pay, was not a significant factor in the decision.
“Typically in Saskatchewan the costs for medication in this kind of environment are relatively stable, and similar across all bids, so that was not a significant factor at all in the determinations. But it was included as an evaluation criteria because we wanted to ensure that there were no anomalies in terms of costs that would fall onto our residents.”
Karlson said centralization was his “first instinct,” but Prairie North “just gave it [the contract] to other competitors, which is a different thing.”
Karlson said he’s unsatisfied with PNHR’s communication.
“I got a couple calls and I got an interview, other than that you’re pretty much shut out. They don’t really tell you anything.”
Miller said the request for proposal process “includes the means to request a debrief for each of the bidders in the process and so that is there as a way for unsuccessful bidders to request feedback.”
A town hall meeting will be held Monday, Aug. 21, featuring members of Cut Knife town council and Karlson. According to the Town’s statement, the town hall meeting is intended to “bring to the forefront concerns of the local citizenship.”
Miller said PNHR is “considering the request” to attend, although he said the debrief is “the preferred means by which issues are raised about how the process was conducted or about specific proposals.”
Miller said the request for proposal process is bound by the New West Partnership Agreement, and he said he believed PNHR “met those standards for procurement in a fair and transparent way.”
The New West Partnership is a 2010 agreement between British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan aimed at lowering interprovincial trade barriers.
