The Employer's Guide Blog for Overseeing PBMs

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TransparentRx Thursday: Acquisition (Pharmacy) Cost for Top Selling Generic and Brand Prescription Drugs

Why is this document 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 healthcare reform. The bottom line; payers must have access to “reference pricing” then apply this knowledge to lower plan expenditures for stakeholders.

As of 9/12/2013 – Published Weekly on Thursdays

How to Determine if a Pricing Problem Exists


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 pharmacy cost then determine if a problem exists. When there is a 10% or more price differential (paid versus actual cost) we consider this a problem.

 
If you discover multiple price differentials then your organization or client is likely overpaying. REPEAT these steps once per month.

Tyrone Squires, MBA, CPBS

I am the proud founder and managing director of TransparentRx, a fiduciary-model PBM based in Las Vegas, Nevada. We help health plan sponsors reduce pharmacy spend, by as much as 50%, without cutting benefits or shifting costs to employees.

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