On August 13, 2024, the New York Times published an article detailing how temperature and humidity levels can impact medication shipments. It’s important that our patients and providers know that AcariaHealth takes medication safety seriously and implements various measures to ensure proper handling of medications shipments. Established, comprehensive processes support AcariaHealth pharmacists in making informed shipping decisions for both refrigerated and non-refrigerated medications. Each day, our pharmacies receive a detailed temperature alert report that identifies locations experiencing
temperatures above 95°F or below 0°F. This enables pharmacists to proactively adjust their shipping strategies while reviewing orders.

Additionally, AcariaHealth utilizes a third-party vendor to provide package monitoring and weather reporting services. This vendor:

• monitors our packages 24/7/365, with their primary goal to get packages to our patients with speed to reduce the time of exposure to unnecessary extreme temperatures.
• identifies a package with any transit issues and then assess best course of action, by requesting a reattempt delivery, clarifying an address, or hiring a 3rd party courier to pick the package up from the carrier provider and deliver it. 
• provides daily weather outlooks for each of our locations and carrier hub locations to ship medications in the best approach possible. This allows us to get medications to our patients safely.
• offers technical support tools allow us to make shipping decisions to proactively reduce/eliminate transit delays by holding packages or using an alternative carrier if hub related.
• includes built-in logic to alert shippers when temperatures are outside the optimal range. In such cases, the software prompts a consult with a pharmacist to determine whether the medication requires special packaging or if the shipment should be delayed.

Beyond these measures, we conduct routine testing of our packaging solutions in real transit conditions during both winter and summer. AcariaHealth maintains rigorous quality standards and holds accreditations from URAC, ACHC, TJC and NABP. These accrediting bodies review our policies, team member trainings and cooler testing data to ensure we are following their accreditation standards and consistently meet temperature requirements as outlined by USP (United States Pharmacopeia) guidelines.

For questions or more information on how AcariaHealth ensures medication safety for the patients we serve, please contact 800-511-5144.