Within Ascension's broad mission to answer God's call to bring health, healing and hope to all, Dispensary of Hope CEO Scott Cornwell says the charitable subsidiary he leads has a little carve out: medication access.
As a pharmaceutical distributor under the Ascension umbrella, Dispensary of Hope requests medication donations from manufacturers and distributes them to clinics and pharmacies to be given to qualifying low-income patients free of charge.
In 2014, CHA honored Dispensary of Hope with its Achievement Citation for exemplifying the Catholic health care ministry's commitment to carry on Jesus' mission of compassion and healing. A doctor at what was then Saint Thomas Health in Nashville, Tennessee, founded Dispensary of Hope in 2003. Within 10 years it had about 80 pharmacies in its network. Saint Thomas Health is now part of Ascension.
Cornwell says his organization has come a long way since its founding, especially in recent years. "We are literally coast to coast," he says. "From the very earliest days, this was our dream."
The Dispensary of Hope pharmacy network now encompasses 305 sites in 38 states. Just last year, it added 29 pharmacies. Eleven of the newest sites are within Ascension, bringing the health system's total to 34. All of the pharmacies are part of nonprofit care providers and several are operated by other Catholic health systems, including Trinity Health, Bon Secours Mercy Health and CommonSpirit Health.
The number of medication doses donated to Dispensary of Hope by drug manufacturers reached 130 million last year, an increase of 62% from 2024. The number of prescriptions the charity filled hit 1.2 million annually, or 3,500 a day.
Creating a toehold
Cornwell says it took until about 2020 for Dispensary of Hope to firmly establish itself as a go-between for drugmakers and nonprofit pharmacies that dispense medication to people in need. "I think it has taken that long for our identity to become well known," he says. "The industry is built for the typical commercial marketplace, and to establish ourselves as a reliable and viable solution just took a little bit of time."
For many years, the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy has given Dispensary of Hope its highest accreditation rating for a pharmaceutical distributor. "That is really important for us, because we would say that quality of health care is synonymous with dignity and we just cannot, will not, let that be compromised in any way," Cornwell says.
Dispensary of Hope is based in Nashville. It stocks and ships medications from a warehouse there. To be eligible for its medications, patients must be uninsured and their incomes must be less than three times the federal poverty level. Pharmacies use an online portal created by Dispensary of Hope to order medication for their patients. The pharmacies then dispense the drugs or ship them to patients' homes.
The medication the charity collected last year came from 58 drugmakers located across the globe. Dispensary of Hope focuses on chronic-maintenance medicines in five categories: mental health, cardiovascular, diabetes, respiratory, and endocrine and gastrointestinal.
"These are the medications that you would find that, by and large, are keeping most patients out of the emergency room," Cornwell explains.
The charity maintains a Primary Access Medication List, which currently contains 172 medications that are consistently available in its inventory to treat the most common primary care conditions. This list allows dispensing partners to order medication and be assured that the same medication will be available on a recurring basis for continued or maintenance treatment.
Dispensary of Hope also keeps a Flexible Access Medication List, which currently contains 177 medications. Those medications are in a variable supply and address a range of primary care conditions. This list allows dispensing partners to fill gaps in their charitable inventory to serve more patients by extending charity care resources.
Of Dispensary of Hope's budget of about $5 million, 60% comes from its member pharmacies, which subscribe to its services. The other 40% comes from philanthropic gifts from foundations and other donors.
Shared vision
Whereas early on, Dispensary of Hope mostly gathered surplus medication, now all of the medication is sourced by donation from manufacturers and most of its supplies are specifically made by manufacturers at the charity's request. The drugmakers might get a tax write-off for their gifts, but Cornwell says the bigger motivation for the companies isn't financial. He says their giving is part of their corporate social responsibility strategy, which Dispensary of Hope's work fits into.
"The reason that they are at the table and supporting our work is because they, too, understand the vision and the mission and are committed to it," he says.
Even with its growth, Dispensary of Hope is still scratching the surface of the need for medication among low-income Americans, Cornwell says. He points out that since passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, the uninsured population has dropped drastically but still stands at about 28 million. Also, many of those covered under the ACA have catastrophic plans that don't pay for prescriptions.
"We did bend the curve as a country," Cornwell says. "However, we didn't eliminate the need."
His organization has a strategy to expand its reach so it can get more free medications to more people. To smooth that process, Cornwell says it would be helpful if the nation had more stable policies around health care. For example, tariffs that disrupt, or even threaten to disrupt, the pharmaceutical supply chain mean instability for his organization and care providers.
He aspires for Dispensary of Hope to gain even more recognition as a source of free medication and more partners for its work. "Why is Dispensary of Hope the best-kept secret?" he wonders. "And how do we change that?"
Further reading: Ascension's chief pharmacy officer is on mission to get medications to those in need