Study Results from Tufts Medical Center in the Area of Managed Care and Specialty Pharmacy Reported (Specialty Drug Coverage Varies Between Health Plans’ Medical and Pharmacy Benefit Policies): Drugs and Therapies – Managed Care and Specialty Pharmacy

2023 AUG 21 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Current study results on Drugs and Therapies - Managed Care and Specialty Pharmacy have been published. According to news reporting originating from Boston, Massachusetts, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “In an effort to control drug spending, health plans are increasingly shifting specialty drugs from their medical benefit to the pharmacy benefit. One consequence of this trend is that some health plans have both a medical and a pharmacy coverage policy for the same drug.To examine how frequently health plans issue medical and pharmacy benefit policies for the same specialty drug and to evaluate the concordance between plans’ medical and pharmacy policies when plans issue both policy types.”

Our news editors obtained a quote from the research from Tufts Medical Center, “We identified specialty drug coverage policies from the Tufts Medical Center Specialty Drug Evidence and Coverage Database, which includes policies issued by 17 of the largest US commercial health plans. Policies were current as of August 2020. We determined plans that issued both medical and pharmacy policies. Next, we identified drugs with ‘medical-pharmacy policy pairs,’ ie, drugs for which a plan issued both a medical and a pharmacy policy. For these pairs, we compared the plan’s policies while accounting for the following coverage criteria: patient subgroups (patients must meet certain clinical criteria), prescriber requirements (a specialist must prescribe the drug), and step therapy protocols (patients must first fail alternative treatments). We considered medical-pharmacy policy pairs to be discordant if coverage criteria differed, eg, the medical policy included a prescriber requirement but the pharmacy policy did not.Eight plans issued separate medical and pharmacy benefit coverage policies for the same specialty drug and indication. Among these 8 plans, we identified 1,619 medical-pharmacy policy pairs. Eighty-six percent of pairs were concordant (1,386/1,619), and 14% were discordant (233/1,619). Discordance was most often due to differences in plans’ application of step therapy protocols (184/233), followed by prescriber requirements (52/233) and patient subgroups (25/233). Forty pairs were discordant in multiple ways. Of discordant pairs, medical policies were more restrictive 41% (96/233) of the time; pharmacy policies were more restrictive 54% (125/233) of the time; 5% of the time (12/233), the medical policy was more restrictive in some ways, but the pharmacy policy was more restrictive in others. Overall, plans imposed coverage restrictions in their medical and pharmacy policies with similar frequencies.Commercial health plans’ medical and pharmacy coverage policies for the same specialty drugs tended to be concordant, although we found coverage criteria to be discordant 14% of the time.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Medical and pharmacy policies that are inconsistent in their coverage criteria and restrictions complicate, and potentially hinder, patients’ access to specialty drugs.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Specialty Drug Coverage Varies Between Health Plans’ Medical and Pharmacy Benefit Policies. Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy, 2023;29(6):607-613. Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy can be contacted at: Acad Managed Care Pharmacy, 100 N Pitt St, 400, Alexandria, VA 22314-3134, USA.

The news editors report that additional information may be obtained by contacting A. Alex Levine, Tufts Medical Center, Center for the Evaluation of Value and Risk in Health, Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies, Boston, MA 02111, United States. Additional authors for this research include Ari D. Panzer, James Chambers, Teresa L. Kauf, Lauren Strand and Amy K. O’Sullivan.

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