Kentucky: Injured Worker May Choose His or Her Own Pharmacy

A Kentucky appellate court held that pharmacies are “medical providers” for purposes of Rev. Stat. Ann. § 342.020(1). Accordingly, the injured worker’s right to choose his or her own medical provider extended to the selection of a pharmacy. The court observed that since 1996, the Board had interpreted “medical providers” to include pharmacies. Moreover, as to prescriptions filled for injured workers, a pharmacist was entitled to be paid an amount equal to the wholesale price the pharmacist paid for the lowest priced drug which was therapeutically equivalent to the drug used to fill the prescription, plus a $5 dispensing fee (together with any applicable federal or state tax or assessment).

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is the co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Steel Creations v. Injured Workers’ Pharmacy, 2016 Ky. App. LEXIS 38 (Mar. 25, 2016)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 94.02.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law.