“White Bagging” Delays Care

The experience of cancer patients in Indiana illustrates how the practice of white bagging delays patient care by days and weeks, sidetracks medical teams from direct patient care, burdens providers with tedious administrative burdens, and up-ends personalized treatment plans that physicians tailor for each cancer patient. White bagging is a health insurance directive that prohibits cancer care providers from obtaining and managing chemotherapy drugs for their patients, and instead requires a third-party specialty pharmacy to mix, dispense and ship drugs to physician offices and cancer care clinics.

White bagging is unnecessary, ineffective and unsafe. Legislators in state capitols across the country are questioning the practice, and putting policies in place to protect timely patient access to medication and shield physicians from administrative burdens that distract them from direct patient care. Patients and Providers United amplifies the voices that seek to keep patients and providers – not middlemen with inadequate clinical experience driven by cost containment goals – at the center of medical decision making.