Scott Spector, MD, of Spector Eye Care, spoke with Ophthalmology 360 at the 2026 ASCRS Annual Meeting about Harrow’s new direct-to-prescriber model, PharmaPack, which removes insurance-related administrative complexity and offers pricing transparency for ophthalmic treatments.
Learn more about Harrow’s initiative.
Scott Spector, MD:
My name is Scott Spector. I’ve been in practice in Norwalk, Connecticut, for 37 years, and I have my own practice called Spector Eye Care.
The additions of us being able to have high-level name brand medications in our office that we can actually sell to the patients at a very reduced price from what their pharmaceutical plans would pay for a generic, if they can get it at the drug store, when they can get it in the drugstore, put so much more power into our hands.
For instance, a medication like Tobradex ST, which is a particularly good version of tobramycin and dexamethasone, is available, and we’re able to sell that to a patient for $40 or $50 without getting into any trouble. We don’t have to make a lot of money. We don’t have to make any money on it, but we know that when the patient leaves the office, they have the medications they need, and we’re not going to get a call from CVS and say, “Oh, you have to switch them over to the generic, and it’s $80.” We’re very happy with that.
The portfolio of drugs that are available in this group are really good medications that we’ve used for years. Tobradex XT, Maxatrol, Vigamox, and Nevanac really fills the bill for us. We can actually give patients name-brand medications postoperatively as well using these brands, and then we can titrate the doses of each medication as we go through the process.
The beauty of it is it’s a known entity. When you get up in the morning and you go to get your coffee, you have an idea of what it’s going to cost. But if you go to the drug store with a prescription, it can cost anything and you have no way of knowing it. You get to the pharmacy and they tell you that this eye drop that your doctor just wrote for you is $700. What do we do? We get a phone call to, “I can’t afford $700.” We try another medication and that comes back as they don’t even have that one and so on and so forth. The beauty of this is no matter what the problem is, for less than $100, our patient is going to walk out of our office with 1, 2, or 3 different medications that they could use and we know that they have it and they know that they have it and it’s a set price, just like your coffee is in the morning. It’s what you know and it’s what we know. I think it’s great.
I was speaking with the CEO of Harrow and I was telling him that I thought that this was a unique place for his company as the only company that really is looking out for the patient and not for the pharmaceutical company. What they do is they give us a price point for our patients as opposed to giving us a coupon that will hopefully get them bigger reimbursement on the other side. The whole coupon game is a quagmire in ophthalmology, whereas this is what it costs, this is what you’ll pay, and it will work. It’s so much easier and so much better and really takes a huge load off of me and my office staff.
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