Analysis

Today’s guest post comes from Kristina Crockett, VP of Product Management at CoverMyMeds.

Kristina discusses challenges patients face accessing, affording, and adhering to prescribed medications. She goes on to describe how manufacturers can overcome these challenges to improve outcomes for both patients and brands.

Click here to learn more about CoverMyMeds’ technology solutions.

Read on for Kristina’s insights.

Posted by Drug Channels Institute, an HMP Global company on Friday, June 28, 2024

Labels: Guest Post, Sponsored Post

Posted by Drug Channels Institute, an HMP Global company on Tuesday, June 25, 2024

Labels: Biosimilars, Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs), Specialty Drugs, Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, PBMs, Pharmacy Economics

Good news, everyone! We have secured four outstanding fireside chat participants for our inaugural Drug Channels Leadership Forum, which will be held next March in Miami.

I’ll be leading one-on-one conversations with each of these executives:

• Steven H. Collis, Chairman, President, and CEO, Cencora, Inc.

• Patrick Conway, MD, MSc, CEO, Optum Rx

• Frank Cunningham, Group Vice President, Global Value and Access & Lilly Direct, Eli Lilly and Company

• Tim Wentworth, CEO, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc.

Our fireside chats will illuminate crucial issues and key strategic concerns affecting the prescription drug market and the entire U.S. healthcare system.

The event will also include panel discussions covering a range of important topics. Participants in these panels will be announced this fall.

IMPORTANT: To maximize the value of networking and learning, the event will have a limited number of attendees. Click here to request an invitation.

We will also have a limited number of sponsors. Click here to learn more about sponsorship opportunities.

Read on for the full press release. Hope you can join us!

Posted by Drug Channels Institute, an HMP Global company on Monday, June 24, 2024

Labels: Industry Trends, DCI In-Person Events

This week, I’m rerunning some popular posts while I prepare for today's live video webinar: The 340B Drug Pricing Program: Trends, Controversies, and Outlook. The webinar begins at 12:00 PM ET.

Click here to see the original post from March 2024.

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Today’s guest post comes from Mark Cuban, co-founder of the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company

A few weeks ago, Mark participated in the White House Roundtable on Lowering Healthcare Costs and Bringing Transparency to Prescription Drug Middlemen. I found Mark’s comments to be intriguing and highly provocative, so I invited him to publish an edited version exclusively here on Drug Channels.

Read on for Mark’s unfiltered view of the PBM industry. Feel free to add your own thoughts below or on LinkedIn.

Posted by Drug Channels Institute, an HMP Global company on Friday, June 21, 2024

Labels: Guest Post

This week, I’m rerunning some popular posts while I prepare for tomorrow's live video webinar: The 340B Drug Pricing Program: Trends, Controversies, and Outlook.

Click here to see the original post from February 2024.

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It's Valentine’s Day—and commercial plan sponsors remain smitten with copay accumulators and maximizers.

Our latest update finds that as of late 2023, about half of commercial lives were in plans that utilize a copay accumulator and/or a maximizer. These programs’ growth continues to divert the value of a manufacturer’s copay support payments away from patients and toward plans and PBMs. Check out the data below.

Patient advocacy groups and some big legal wins are starting to reverse Cupid’s arrow. But given the money at stake, I suspect that plans will keep looking for love in all the wrong places.

Posted by Drug Channels Institute, an HMP Global company on Thursday, June 20, 2024

Labels: Co-pay Offset Programs, Benefit Design, Copay Accumulator Adjustment, Specialty Drugs

This week, I’m rerunning some popular posts while I prepare for Friday’s live video webinar: The 340B Drug Pricing Program: Trends, Controversies, and Outlook.

Click here to see the original post from April 2024.

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Last week, we documented the substantial concentration of dispensing revenues for specialty drugs. See The Top 15 Specialty Pharmacies of 2023: Market Shares and Revenues at the Biggest PBMs, Health Plans, and Independents.

Today, we examine how manufacturers’ specialty networks contribute to this concentration. In DCI’s exclusive analysis below, we show that specialty pharmacies affiliated with pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) play an outsized role in manufacturer-designated dispensing networks.

A typical network contains about five specialty pharmacies—but one in three specialty products with a manufacturer-designated network contains only a single specialty pharmacy. In those exclusive networks, independent and smaller specialty pharmacies are the big winners.

Read on for DCI’s updated profile of specialty networks—and ponder why smaller pharmacies are winning the battle for exclusive networks.

Posted by Drug Channels Institute, an HMP Global company on Wednesday, June 19, 2024

Labels: Pharmacy, Specialty Drugs, Channel Management, PBMs

This week, I’m rerunning some popular posts while I prepare for Friday’s live video webinar: The 340B Drug Pricing Program: Trends, Controversies, and Outlook.

One important update to the figures below: We (and many others) had significantly underestimated Walgreens' revenues and market share. As we discuss below, its market share is closer to 10%, compared with the 3% that we originally reported.

Click here to see the original post from April 2024.

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Drug Channels Institute’s (DCI’s) latest analysis finds that participants in the specialty pharmacy market continue to get more diverse—although revenues remain highly concentrated.

We have identified nearly 1,800 dispensing sites with specialty pharmacy accreditation—about 40% of which are owned by hospitals, physician practices, and other healthcare providers.

Alas, specialty pharmacies owned by the three largest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) have the most brass in their pocket, as they accounted for two-thirds of prescription revenues from pharmacy-dispensed specialty drugs.

Read on for DCI’s latest overview of the 2023 marketplace and revenues of the biggest market participants, along with key specialty pharmacy trends.

Posted by Drug Channels Institute, an HMP Global company on Tuesday, June 18, 2024

Labels: Hospitals, Industry Trends, Pharmacy, Specialty Drugs, Channel Management, PBMs, Narrow Networks

This week, I’m rerunning some popular posts while I prepare for Friday’s live video webinar: The 340B Drug Pricing Program: Trends, Controversies, and Outlook.

Click here to see the original post from April 2024.

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Three is still the magic number for pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs).

For 2023, nearly 80% of all equivalent prescription claims were processed by three companies: the Caremark business of CVS Health, the Express Scripts business of Cigna, and the Optum Rx business of UnitedHealth Group.

Read on for Drug Channels Institute’s (DCI’s) latest market share figures, along with a preview of the industry changes that will shift these shares over the next few years.

Posted by Drug Channels Institute, an HMP Global company on Monday, June 17, 2024

Labels: Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs), Mergers and Acquisitions, Industry Trends, Channel Management, PBMs

Today’s guest post comes from Christine Juday, Head of Market Access at Real Chemistry.

Chris discusses new research on how patients perceive out-of-pocket costs. As she explains, many patients and unpaid caregivers consider out-of-pocket costs for medication within the context of their total spending. She then recommends three ways that manufacturers can improve patients' access and affordability.

Click here to learn more about Real Chemistry’s suite of market access consulting and payer/IDN marketing solutions. You can also sign up for its weekly Value Report, summarizing the week in drug pricing, access, and value news.

Read on for Chris' insights.

Posted by Drug Channels Institute, an HMP Global company on Friday, June 14, 2024

Labels: Guest Post, Sponsored Post

The 340B contract pharmacy market shows little sign of slowing down. Drug Channels Institute’s exclusive analysis of the 2024 market reveals that:

• About 33,000 pharmacy locations—more than half of the entire U.S. pharmacy industry—act as contract pharmacies for the hospitals and federal grantees that participate in the 340B program.

• Five multi-billion-dollar, for-profit, publicly traded pharmacy chains and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs)—Cigna (via Express Scripts), CVS Health, UnitedHealth Group (via Optum Rx), and Walgreens, Walmart—continue to dominate the 340B contract pharmacy market.

• Over the past four years, manufacturers’ restrictions on 340B contract pharmacies have led hospitals to deepen their relationships with the largest PBMs—even as those PBMs have simultaneously limited hospitals’ direct participation in specialty pharmacy networks.

For an updated look at what’s next for the 340B contract pharmacy market, join Adam J. Fein, Ph.D., on June 21 for his latest live video webinar: The 340B Drug Pricing Program: Trends, Controversies, and Outlook.

Posted by Drug Channels Institute, an HMP Global company on Wednesday, June 12, 2024

Labels: Hospitals, 340B, Pharmacy, Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, Specialty Drugs, Channel Management