Pharmacy benefit manager reform within Medicaid Managed Care: The pursuit of a model that preserves the intent of the 340B program

Disclaimer In an effort to expedite the publication of articles related to the COVID-19 pandemic, AJHP is posting these manuscripts online as soon as possible after acceptance. Accepted manuscripts have been peer-reviewed and copyedited, but are posted online before technical formatting and author proofing. These manuscripts are not the final version of record and will be replaced with the final article (formatted per AJHP style and proofed by the authors) at a later time.

A pharmacist-managed virtual consult service to improve tuberculosis screening

Disclaimer In an effort to expedite the publication of articles related to the COVID-19 pandemic, AJHP is posting these manuscripts online as soon as possible after acceptance. Accepted manuscripts have been peer-reviewed and copyedited, but are posted online before technical formatting and author proofing. These manuscripts are not the final version of record and will be replaced with the final article (formatted per AJHP style and proofed by the authors) at a later time. Purpose To describe a pharmacist-managed virtual consult service practice model to improve medication safety in a population of rheumatology patients and evaluate its initial impact on guideline compliance. Summary Optimal pharmacologic care of patients with rheumatologic conditions often revolves around the use of specialty medications such as self-injectable biologics and infused therapies, including biologic response modifiers (BRMs), nearly all of which carry risks of serious adverse events due to their immune-suppressive properties. Possible adverse events include serious infections such as reactivation of tuberculosis (TB) and viral hepatitis B (HBV). This articles describes a pharmacist-managed virtual consult service introduced by a large university-affiliated health system in 2018 to integrate clinical, specialty pharmacy, and therapeutic infusion services for proactive medication and safety management for patients with rheumatologic conditions requiring specialty or infused medications. During a 4-month evaluation period, 157 referrals were sent to the consult service; of 137 consults included in the analysis, 42% were for self-injectable biologic medications, 28% were for intra-articular injections, 26% were for infusions, and 4% were for oral specialty medications. Forty-one percent of the pharmacy benefit consult orders required an intervention prior to submission of prior authorization requests. Most interventions (61%) were clinical in nature and involved the pharmacists ensuring that necessary laboratory work, clinical disease activity scoring, or radiographic imaging were completed prior to submission of the consult results for insurer approval. Conclusion National rates of HBV screening and TB screening for patients prescribed BRMs continue to be suboptimal. The pharmacist-managed virtual consult service is a novel practice model to increase the screening rate to 100% to ensure the safety and appropriate monitoring of patients who are starting or continued on these complex medications.

Proposed Solutions for Rising Drug Prices

This chapter explores proposed solutions for high drug prices. They include measures to rein in “middlemen” pharmacy benefit managers who may artificially inflate prices; increase generic drug competition to prevent price spikes for older, off-patent drugs; enhance competition for new drugs after brand-name products reach the intended period of market protection; align US drug prices with the lower prices available in other wealthy countries; and leverage the collective bargaining power of government payers to compel drug companies to accept lower prices for their products. Policies that force drug prices down can save money but risk choking off the development of important new advances, limiting patient access to their health benefits. Moreover, the policy solutions typically offered are incremental solutions that will likely put a modest dent in the nation’s $500 billion annual drug bill. Most important, they fail to link a drug’s price to its value.

Do patients benefit from legislation regulating step therapy?

Step therapy, also termed fail-first policy, describes a practice of insurance and pharmacy benefit management companies denying reimbursement for a specific treatment until after other treatments have first been found ineffective (i.e. failed). Laws to limit step therapy have been passed in 29 states of the United States. Using extrapolated data on fully insured employees, we find that except for New York and New Mexico, enacted State laws don't apply to even one-third of a state's population. Using the more robust Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) data, which do not include fully insured employees, we find that only 2–10% of a state's population is covered. Advocating for these laws has been an expensive and time-consuming process, likely to become more so for the 21 states without such laws. The laws that have been enacted can be near impossible, to enforce, and loopholes exist. As a result, using KFF data, more than 90% of people in the United States with health insurance may still be unable to access the treatment chosen as most appropriate for them with their physician. Based on these data, we conclude federal step-therapy legislation is needed.

The Commissions Paid to Brokers for Fully Insured Health Insurance Plans

Insurance agents and brokers play an important role in facilitating the contracting of fully insured health insurance and pharmacy benefit plans for U.S. employers. They are primarily compensated with a commission charged back to the plan. Using a national sample that covered 11.7 million employees enrolled in 33,689 health plans in 2017, we found that a plan’s commission (median: $178) was positively associated with a plan’s premium (coefficient: 0.01 for the full sample and 0.03 for small plans, p < .001) after controlling for the number of enrollees. The commission-to-premium ratio was greater for smaller plans and plans offered by nonmajor insurance companies, and varied by geographic region. Policy makers should consider improving transparency of the commission to facilitate employers making efficient broker contracting and plan purchasing decisions. The fee-based brokerage model has the potential to help employers and workers contain health care spending.