Tuesday Tip of the Week: Dose Optimization Interventions Yield Significant Specialty Drug Cost Savings

Dose optimization strategies offer a potentially valid, clinically based intervention in which payers can realize a direct drug cost savings, and indirect medical cost avoidance. Dose optimization programs have been evaluated with once-daily, oral maintenance medications using various methods that produced varied results.
These studies were conducted in medication classes such as gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), anxiety and depression, and hypercholesterolemia. While the current literature describes dose optimization in the nonspecialty space, there is limited literature on dose optimization strategies used for specialty products.
Oral Oncology Therapies: Specialty Pharmacy's Newest Challenge
Source: Pharmacy Times
A specialty pharmacy developing a dose optimization program could evaluate the implications and viability for specialty products, since they work closely with payers and providers. A successful dose optimization program within a specialty pharmacy could contribute a significant cost savings for payers, further mitigating the rising costs of specialty medications. Therefore, the goal of this pilot program was to evaluate the scenarios and opportunities for dose optimization within a selected group of oncolytics.
Diplomat Pharmacy’s oncology program delivers comprehensive care management to help patients address complex aspects of their treatment and condition. The crossfunctional oncology team is composed of specialized clinicians, and nonclinicians leveraging evidence-based care for treatment optimization, improved care coordination, and therapeutic cost management.

Channel Management for Specialty: Challenges with Medical Benefit or Pharmacy Benefit

At the point when the vast majority consider getting their meds filled, they take their script to their nearby network drug store or send their script to a mail order pharmacy. As a rule, by far most of prescribed drugs are usually secured under the pharmacy benefit in the interest of the individual’s insurance plan.
Albeit a retail or customary mail channel bodes well for 97% to 99% of non-specialty medications, the other 1% to 3% of scripts are specialty drugs that may should be filled through another channel including home infusion, physician clinic or a hospital. With specialty medications, there is dilemna in which either the medical or pharmacy benefit may be the primary point for dispensing, administration, and reimbursement.
In recent years, as the industry has watched specialty spend grow, I have observed prescription insurance plans’ specialty gross costs represent anywhere from one-third to 50% of their total gross spending while the number of prescriptions being filled for that specialty spend is for fewer than 1% of the health plan’s total pharmacy prescriptions.
According to CVS Health’s 2018 Drug Report and the cohort of insurance plan’s it manages, “Specialty utilization and share of gross cost continues to grow, reaching 45 percent of total pharmacy spend in 2018 as compared to 42% in 2017, despite comprising only 1 percent of prescription claims.”

Reference Pricing: “Gross” Invoice Cost vs. AWP for Popular Generic and Brand Prescription Drugs (Volume 322)

This document is updated weekly, but why is it important? Healthcare marketers are aggressively pursuing new revenue streams to augment lower reimbursements provided under PPACA. Prescription drugs, particularly specialty, are key drivers in the growth strategies of PBMs, TPAs, and MCOs pursuant to health care reform.

The costs shared here are what the pharmacy actually pays; not AWP, MAC or WAC. The bottom line; payers must have access to actual acquisition costs or AAC. Apply this knowledge to hold PBMs accountable and lower plan expenditures for stakeholders.

 
How to Determine if Your Company [or Client] is Overpaying
 
Step #1:  Obtain a price list for generic prescription drugs from your broker, TPA, ASO or PBM every month.
 

Step #2:  In addition, request an electronic copy of all your prescription transactions (claims) for the billing cycle which coincides with the date of your price list.

Step #3:  Compare approximately 10 to 20 prescription claims against the price list to confirm contract agreement. It’s impractical to verify all claims, but 10 is a sample size large enough to extract some good assumptions.

Step #4:  Now take it one step further. Check what your organization has paid, for prescription drugs, against our acquisition costs then determine if a problem exists. When there is more than a 5% price differential for brand drugs or 25% (paid versus actual cost) for generic drugs we consider this a potential problem thus further investigation is warranted.

Multiple price differential discoveries mean that your organization or client is likely overpaying. REPEAT these steps once per month.

— Tip —


Always include a semi-annual market check in your PBM contract language. Market checks provide each payer the ability, during the contract, to determine if better pricing is available in the marketplace compared to what the client is currently receiving.

 
When better pricing is discovered the contract language should stipulate the client be indemnified. Do not allow the PBM to limit the market check language to a similar size client, benefit design and/or drug utilization. In this case, the market check language is effectually meaningless.

Tuesday Tip of the Week: When the carrier, PBM and ASO all share the same parent company you are fully insured

Well, I guess it depends on why you moved away from the fully-insured funding option in the first place. There are several pros for self-funding chief among them include:

1) More Control
2) Better Reporting
3) Improved Pricing
3) Formulary
4) Better Health Outcomes
5) Elimination of Rebates to Carriers
6) More Transparency
With that said, I am asking plan sponsors and their independent consultants to consider the following question.
Click to Learn More
A self-insured pharmacy benefit plan should provide better cost control, transparency and technology as well as information and reporting. When your PBM is reluctant to share valuable information to help you manage and evaluate performance are you really self-insured? Health insurers may combine aspects of the two funding options to subsidize pricing (cost-shifting).
For companies with a carved in program, there may be concerns about changing to a carved-out program due to a perception that additional time and resources will be needed, but I have seen that on a day to day basis, there is little difference in having a separate pharmacy program. The farther removed you are from the downsides of a fully-insured pharmacy benefit plan the better off your group will be.

Potential Specialty Generic Drugs 2020

The worldwide Specialty Generic Drugs Market is foreseen to reach USD 190.9 billion by 2025. Specialty Generics drugs are the generic forms of pharmacological drugs. These medications are monetarily less expensive as opposed to brand medications. All things being equal, the turn of events and commercialization of specialty generics drugs are much more complex when contrasted to non-specialty generics drugs.
Organizations are going into the specialty nonexclusive medications market to manufactuer generic forms of drugs by framing new medication formulations. Moreover, the worldwide capacity non-specialty generics drugs is driving organizations to look for more current chances.

Reference Pricing: “Gross” Invoice Cost vs. AWP for Popular Generic and Brand Prescription Drugs (Volume 321)

This document is updated weekly, but why is it important? Healthcare marketers are aggressively pursuing new revenue streams to augment lower reimbursements provided under PPACA. Prescription drugs, particularly specialty, are key drivers in the growth strategies of PBMs, TPAs, and MCOs pursuant to health care reform.

The costs shared here are what the pharmacy actually pays; not AWP, MAC or WAC. The bottom line; payers must have access to actual acquisition costs or AAC. Apply this knowledge to hold PBMs accountable and lower plan expenditures for stakeholders.

 
 
How to Determine if Your Company [or Client] is Overpaying
 
Step #1:  Obtain a price list for generic prescription drugs from your broker, TPA, ASO or PBM every month.
 

Step #2:  In addition, request an electronic copy of all your prescription transactions (claims) for the billing cycle which coincides with the date of your price list.

Step #3:  Compare approximately 10 to 20 prescription claims against the price list to confirm contract agreement. It’s impractical to verify all claims, but 10 is a sample size large enough to extract some good assumptions.

Step #4:  Now take it one step further. Check what your organization has paid, for prescription drugs, against our acquisition costs then determine if a problem exists. When there is more than a 5% price differential for brand drugs or 25% (paid versus actual cost) for generic drugs we consider this a potential problem thus further investigation is warranted.

Multiple price differential discoveries mean that your organization or client is likely overpaying. REPEAT these steps once per month.

— Tip —


Always include a semi-annual market check in your PBM contract language. Market checks provide each payer the ability, during the contract, to determine if better pricing is available in the marketplace compared to what the client is currently receiving.

 
When better pricing is discovered the contract language should stipulate the client be indemnified. Do not allow the PBM to limit the market check language to a similar size client, benefit design and/or drug utilization. In this case, the market check language is effectually meaningless.

Tip of the Week: Pass-Through and Transparent PBM Business Models are Small Ideas

All of the different PBM business models will profess how much money they can help plan sponsors save or ways to improve your pharmacy benefit plan. But what one thing none of them are doing is sharing with these same employers how much money they are making off your group. Only two business models will do that – fiduciary or radically transparent PBM models. I mean who are we kidding? Traditional, pass-through and transparent PBM business models are for the most part the same. Do any of them reveal how much money the PBM is being paid for servicing your group?
Think about this for a second. The contracts pharmacy benefit managers enter into with pharmaceutical manufacturers and pharmacies are pretty much set in stone. Unless a PBM significantly outperforms its contract, the terms between us and manufacturers won’t change until the contract has come to an end. For a PBM to outperform a contract with a pharmaceutical manufacturer or rebate aggregator would require doubling the number of lives covered, for example. If you believe this and you should, then what plan sponsors are really negotiating for come renewal is what part of the discounts a PBM has secured you will allow that same PBM to keep.
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The amount of dollars a PBM keeps for itself is referred to as the PBM’s service fee. In other words, it is the fee a PBM is charging you for the services it was hired to perform. PBM service fees are a primary driver of PMPM or PEPY costs. While rebates, clinical management, and discount guarantees are important, they are also being used to distract purchasers from a key driver of their final plan costs – PBM service fees.
Don’t confuse the service fee with the admin fee. The service fee is the amount of money a PBM keeps in its bank acount after the bills are paid. An admin fee is usually a per claim, PEPM or PMPM fee which is easily quantifiable. I don’t want to confuse you but the admin fee I’m referring to is different than a manufacturer admin fee. That is a topic for another day. In many cases, the non-fiduciary PBM will offer an artificially low admin fee knowing full well acceptance means you’ve essentially given it a blank check for service fees.
Pass-through and transparent PBM business models don’t let you in on what their service fee amounts to. That is a big big problem. Unlike admin fees, service fees are not easily quantifiable primarily because non-fiduciary PBM don’t want you to know just how much their fees are contributing to your costs! The full-disclosure and fiduciary-model PBM will let employers in on their service fee or the part of negotiated discounts it will keep. The lower this fee the less employers pay plain and simple. A fair PBM service fee will bend the cost trend. Non-fiduciary PBM companies have learned how to leverage the purchasing power of the unsophisticated plan sponsor purchaser to their financial advantage.
The perception of many plan sponsors is that “AWP minus discount” and the “minimum rebate guarantee” are the two key components in evaluating the PBM proposal. The plan sponsor should take the time to investigate the cash flows to the PBM. PBM cash flow is a variable rarely considered in the evaluation of PBM proposals yet can have the most profound impact on final costs. Making what you pay a PBM, or their service fee, the primary metric in evaluating PBM proposals is a big 💡 idea. A fiduciary PBM will allow purchasers this level of disclosure. If a PBM is purporting to be fiduciary yet doesn’t offer this level of transparency, then at the very least it is telling half-truths.
There are two things which should be non-starters for purchasers of PBM services. One, having full access to your own claims data, via SFTP, free of charge. Second, knowing what you pay a PBM for the services it was hired to perform. Alvin Toffler wrote, “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” Education is the most logical and effective foundation for achieving extraordinary results in pharmacy benefit management services.

Reference Pricing: “Gross” Invoice Cost vs. AWP for Popular Generic and Brand Prescription Drugs (Volume 320)

This document is updated weekly, but why is it important? Healthcare marketers are aggressively pursuing new revenue streams to augment lower reimbursements provided under PPACA. Prescription drugs, particularly specialty, are key drivers in the growth strategies of PBMs, TPAs, and MCOs pursuant to health care reform.

The costs shared here are what the pharmacy actually pays; not AWP, MAC or WAC. The bottom line; payers must have access to actual acquisition costs or AAC. Apply this knowledge to hold PBMs accountable and lower plan expenditures for stakeholders.

How to Determine if Your Company [or Client] is Overpaying
 
Step #1:  Obtain a price list for generic prescription drugs from your broker, TPA, ASO or PBM every month.
 

Step #2:  In addition, request an electronic copy of all your prescription transactions (claims) for the billing cycle which coincides with the date of your price list.

Step #3:  Compare approximately 10 to 20 prescription claims against the price list to confirm contract agreement. It’s impractical to verify all claims, but 10 is a sample size large enough to extract some good assumptions.

Step #4:  Now take it one step further. Check what your organization has paid, for prescription drugs, against our acquisition costs then determine if a problem exists. When there is more than a 5% price differential for brand drugs or 25% (paid versus actual cost) for generic drugs we consider this a potential problem thus further investigation is warranted.

Multiple price differential discoveries mean that your organization or client is likely overpaying. REPEAT these steps once per month.

— Tip —


Always include a semi-annual market check in your PBM contract language. Market checks provide each payer the ability, during the contract, to determine if better pricing is available in the marketplace compared to what the client is currently receiving.

 
When better pricing is discovered the contract language should stipulate the client be indemnified. Do not allow the PBM to limit the market check language to a similar size client, benefit design and/or drug utilization. In this case, the market check language is effectually meaningless.

Tuesday Tip of the Week: 3 Ways to Prepare for the Inevitable Rise in Pharmacy Benefit Costs

While the full impacts are yet to be resolved, specialists are foreseeing that the coronavirus will have an enduring, incessant effect on survivors. As per a Willis Towers Watson examination, in addition to health concerns, these people also face monetary concerns: medical and prescription drug costs for individuals with COVID-19 could spand $250 to $100,000.

An ongoing report by the Integrated Benefits Institute (IBI) additionally found that the complete expense of COVID-19 to employee benefit plans could surpass $23B, excluding auxiliary costs, for example, paid family leave time. This is notwithstanding other health insurance bills businesses were at that point confronting prior this year. Nonetheless, it is conceivable to lessen the expense of pharmacy benefits without increasing employee cost share or reducing benefit levels.
Carve-Out the Pharmacy Benefit
 
PBM programs typically function in two ways. They are either “carved in”, provided by the health insurance company or “carved out”, provided independent of insurance. Whether the pharmacy benefit plan is self-funded or fully insured, any employer with more than 100 active employees should consider and investigate a carve-out strategy for their pharmacy benefits.
A carved out program provides better cost control and transparency, technology and services, as well as information and reporting. Health insurers may bundle the two programs and subsidize some of the pricing from one service with that of another.
For companies with a carved in program, there may be concerns about changing to a carved out program due to a perception that additional time and resources will be needed, but I have seen that on a day to day basis, there is little difference in having a separate PBM program. The functions are the same. Forgoing retail pharmacy rebates for admin fee credits on the medical side is another non-fiduciary pricing game. With opaque contract language and subsequent hidden cash flows, the PBM and/or carrier will recoup those credits you thought were going to reduce costs.
Among the advantages of a carve-out are the following:
1.  Better Contract Terms

2.  Carved-out Specialty Rx 
3.  Customized Clinical Programs 
4.  Lower Pharmacy Costs
5.  Better Data Rights 
6.  More Detailed Analytics
7.  More Transparency 
 
As you can clearly see, there are significant advantages to pursuing a carve-out strategy, both for the plan sponsor and plan participants. PBMs will generally provide transparency and disclosure to a level demanded by the competitive market and rely on the demands of clients in negotiating their contracts. The best proponent of radical transparency or lowest net Rx cost is informed and sophisticated purchasers of PBM services.
Make a Good Formulary
 
A formulary is a list of drugs favored by the PBM for their clinical effectiveness and cost savings. Pharmaceutical manufacturers of specialty and branded drugs often promise financial incentives to have their drugs featured on the formulary. Drug formularies can be open, incented, closed or hybrids. There are five factors necessary for the makings of a good formulary. These include:
1. Multiple enforcement mechanisms
2. A minimum 5 tiered list of drugs
3. Understanding how the drugs are assessed
4. A firm dispute resolution process
5. An expedited appeal process
An enforcement mechanism is particularly important. Certain drugs require prior authorization before they are covered under the drug benefit. Prior authorization is the pre-approval of a drug by the PBM before a pharmacy can dispense it. Not all enforcement mechanisms are created equally. Just because your PBM employs these tools doesn’t mean they are being maximized or effective. Be sure to put in place criteria to measure the PBMs execution of enforcement mechanisms.
Do Business with a Fiduciary PBM
 
Approximately one year ago, Ohio’s Attorney General announced a four-part proposal calling for quick action from the state’s legislature to shine a bright light on PBM contracts. The goal was to cut down on the hidden cash flows to non-fiduciary PBMs. AG Yost’s proposal called for:
  • Drug purchases in the state to be conducted under a master PBM contract that is administered by a single contact point
  • Ohio’s Auditor of State to have full power to review all PBM contracts, purchases and payments
  • The state to prohibit nondisclosure agreements on drug pricing.
  • PBMs to operate as fiduciaries, uh-oh!
So, what is the difference between a fiduciary PBM and one that isn’t? There are some very big differences.
  1. Fiduciary PBMs must provide full disclosure
  2. Fiduciary PBMs provide more transparency
  3. Fiduciary PBMs are a better value (ex. less reliance on PBM consultants or other vendors to reduce drug costs)
  4. Final plan costs can be significantly lower with Fiduciary PBMs due to elimination of hidden fees and maximization of clinical programs including formulary management
In a fiduciary relationship, one person, in a position of vulnerability, justifiably vests confidence, good faith, reliance and trust in another whose aid, advice or protection is sought in some matter. In such a relationship, good conscience requires the fiduciary to act at all times for the sole and interest of the one who trusts.
A fiduciary ideally would not have a conflict of interest. It has been said that fiduciaries must conduct themselves “at a level higher than that trodden by the crowd” and that “[t]he distinguishing or overriding duty of a fiduciary is the obligation of undivided loyalty.
Pharmacy Benefit Managers whose business models are predicated on hidden cash flows will be very reluctant to provide full disclosure. A leopard cannot change its spots. However, plan sponsors who are relentless in their pursuit of radical transparency can significantly reduce pharmacy spend without sacrificing benefit levels or asking employees to pay more by doing business with a fiduciary-model PBM.

Reference Pricing: “Gross” Invoice Cost vs. AWP for Popular Generic and Brand Prescription Drugs (Volume 319)

This document is updated weekly, but why is it important? Healthcare marketers are aggressively pursuing new revenue streams to augment lower reimbursements provided under PPACA. Prescription drugs, particularly specialty, are key drivers in the growth strategies of PBMs, TPAs, and MCOs pursuant to health care reform.

The costs shared here are what the pharmacy actually pays; not AWP, MAC or WAC. The bottom line; payers must have access to actual acquisition costs or AAC. Apply this knowledge to hold PBMs accountable and lower plan expenditures for stakeholders.

 
How to Determine if Your Company [or Client] is Overpaying

Step #1:  Obtain a price list for generic prescription drugs from your broker, TPA, ASO or PBM every month.
 

Step #2:  In addition, request an electronic copy of all your prescription transactions (claims) for the billing cycle which coincides with the date of your price list.

Step #3:  Compare approximately 10 to 20 prescription claims against the price list to confirm contract agreement. It’s impractical to verify all claims, but 10 is a sample size large enough to extract some good assumptions.

Step #4:  Now take it one step further. Check what your organization has paid, for prescription drugs, against our acquisition costs then determine if a problem exists. When there is more than a 5% price differential for brand drugs or 25% (paid versus actual cost) for generic drugs we consider this a potential problem thus further investigation is warranted.

Multiple price differential discoveries mean that your organization or client is likely overpaying. REPEAT these steps once per month.

— Tip —


Always include a semi-annual market check in your PBM contract language. Market checks provide each payer the ability, during the contract, to determine if better pricing is available in the marketplace compared to what the client is currently receiving.

 
When better pricing is discovered the contract language should stipulate the client be indemnified. Do not allow the PBM to limit the market check language to a similar size client, benefit design and/or drug utilization. In this case, the market check language is effectually meaningless.