Everything we get asked, grouped by who asks it.

Most of the time you should not. If the client has coverage and can manage the copay, that is the better route and we will say so — we run the insurance first and only convert to a lien when there is nothing to run. Telling a client to bypass usable coverage is bad for them and creates a failure-to-mitigate argument against your own case.

This exists for the client who has no coverage, cannot clear a deductible, or does not have $40 this week. That client otherwise does not fill the prescription at all. Roughly a fifth to a quarter of written prescriptions are never even taken to a pharmacy, and cost is a leading reason.

The point of a third-party lien pharmacy is that it avoids one. California Rule of Professional Conduct 1.8.5 — like ABA Model Rule 1.8(e) — restricts a lawyer from providing financial assistance to a client in connection with pending litigation. Here the lawyer provides nothing: an independent pharmacy extends credit to the patient, the patient signs the agreement, and the lawyer signs only a protection letter agreeing to address the balance from proceeds.

We are pharmacists, not attorneys, and your professional-responsibility analysis is yours. If your firm's counsel wants to see the patient agreement and the protection-letter language before you refer anyone, ask and we will send both.

An itemized statement on every fill — drug, strength, quantity, date, prescriber, charge — sent to whoever at your firm you tell us to send it to. A running lien ledger any time you ask. At settlement: a final balance letter, a copy of the signed protection letter and patient agreement, and a records affidavit or declaration if you need one for admissibility.

We do not send a single lump-sum invoice eighteen months later. That is how lien balances become disputes.

No. We will ask once for the protection letter and once, at the point you tell us the case has resolved, for the payoff. Nothing on our side depends on knowing whether mediation went well.

Not to us. We are one lienholder among several and we expect to negotiate alongside the surgeon, the imaging center and the hospital. Tell us what the stack looks like when you ask for a reduction; it genuinely changes the answer.

Nothing. We do not bill the surgery center, we do not ask for a contract, and we are not asking for shelf space or a dispensing arrangement inside the facility. The patient's medication is billed on the patient's lien.

E-prescribe to the pharmacy the way you would any other, or fax the order to (323) 653-4079 and call (323) 653-4070 so we know it is time-sensitive. For a scheduled case, send it the day before and the medication is packed and waiting.

California requires most prescriptions to be issued electronically, with the statutory exceptions. We are set up to receive electronically and we are not asking you to work around that.

Yes, within our Los Angeles County courier area, timed to the discharge rather than to our convenience. Counselling happens at hand-off or by phone with the patient, as the law requires and as it should.

Filled under the same rules as any other California pharmacy: a valid prescription from a DEA-registered prescriber, CURES review, quantity and day-supply limits, identification at hand-off, and no delivery arrangement that would put a Schedule II drug somewhere it should not be. If a specific hand-off is not lawful we will tell you that rather than find a way around it.

Because the failure mode is expensive and invisible. A post-operative patient who cannot afford their analgesic and antiemetic on the way home calls the surgeon's office that night, sometimes goes to an emergency department, and reports a bad experience about a procedure that went perfectly. Removing the pharmacy counter from the discharge path removes that whole category of call.

Nothing today, at the counter, for the injury-related prescriptions your attorney has approved. What you are signing is a real agreement to pay for what you receive, with payment deferred until your case resolves and taken out of the settlement before you get your share.

Be clear about that: it is a genuine bill that you owe, not free medication and not a loan. It simply waits. If you have insurance we will run it first — the lien is for when there is nothing else to run.

Yes. We dispense on a lien only when you are represented and your attorney has signed the protection letter. If you do not have an attorney yet, we cannot put you on a lien — but call us anyway and we will tell you what your cash price is, which is often far less than people expect.

Call us and we work it out with your attorney. Balances on cases that recover nothing get reduced or written off — that is our practice, and the risk is priced into doing this work at all.

You will not be sent to a collection agency over a post-operative prescription, and nothing is reported to a credit bureau. Ask us to put that in writing before you start and we will.

No. There is no credit check to get started and we do not report the balance to a credit bureau.

Sí. Llame al (323) 653-4070 y le atendemos en español. También puede leer esta página en español.

Yes, and most people should. We are a full retail pharmacy — insurance, cash, vaccines, over-the-counter, medication synchronization. Your blood pressure medication is not part of the injury lien; it runs through your insurance like anywhere else.

One written price schedule, applied uniformly. A lien patient is charged the same as a cash patient walking in off Wilshire — there is no lien surcharge, no interest, and no finance charge accruing while the case is pending. Ask for the schedule before you refer and we will send it.

The uniformity is the point. California measures the reasonable value of a provider's services against the full range of fees that provider actually accepts, so a lien-specific markup is a cross-examination waiting to happen — and it is your case, not ours, that pays for it.

No. The receivable stays with the pharmacy from the first fill to the disbursement. Nobody buys our lien paper at a discount and then arrives at settlement demanding face value, and there is no third party for the defense to take discovery on.

This matters more than it sounds. Where a lien has been sold, what the buyer paid for it becomes a live discovery target on the question of what your client actually owes. That is a fight we would rather your case never have.

No. What is dispensed is what is owed. A three-year case does not cost more than a nine-month case for the same medication.

Out of the settlement disbursement, from the firm's trust account, against our final balance letter. Same as every other lienholder in the stack.

The firm asks — ideally when the demand goes out, not after the check clears. We look at the gross recovery, the policy limits, the total lien stack, the client's net, and how much of our balance is genuinely tied to the injury. Then we give a number, in writing, that the firm can put on the disbursement sheet. The person deciding is the owner of the pharmacy, which is the entire reason this is faster than it is at a national vendor.

If we agree to a reduction, the reduced number is the number. We do not agree to a compromise and then pursue the patient for the difference.

Yes — Family Pharmacy Services of Beverly Hills, Inc. is licensed by the California State Board of Pharmacy and operates from a permitted retail location at 8314 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA 90211. License status is public and verifiable through the Department of Consumer Affairs license search. If our license number is not yet printed on this page, it is because we would rather show nothing than show a number nobody has checked; call and we will give it to you.

Only what the patient authorizes in a signed HIPAA authorization, and only what the case needs: the itemized billing for the injury-related prescriptions we dispensed. Not the patient's unrelated medication history, and not their other conditions.

What we hold is a contractual lien: the patient signs an agreement granting a lien on and assigning a portion of the case proceeds, and the attorney signs a letter of protection agreeing to honour it out of the disbursement. That is the ordinary mechanism, and it is how most non-hospital providers in California work on injury cases.

It is worth being precise about what it is not. California's Hospital Lien Act, Civil Code section 3045.1 and following, creates a statutory lien for hospitals — a pharmacy is not a hospital and does not get that statute. Anyone telling you a pharmacy has an automatic statutory lien in California is overselling it. General information, not legal advice.

Yes. Every dispensing of a Schedule II–IV controlled substance is reported to California's CURES database on the schedule the law requires, and we check it before dispensing. That obligation does not change because a case is pending.