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Bridging the gap between the hospital and alternate-site care Volume 5 • Number 3 • May/June 2016 • specialtypharmacycontinuum.com
POLICY EMD Serono Digest 2016: the payor/provider disconnect ........................ USP Chapter <800> chemotherapy safety not just for hospitals .......
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Your specialty pharmacy passed accreditation. Now what? .......................... 10
2015 approvals a record; 2016 pipeline strong
For cancer and HCV:
Specialty Drugs Remain A Robust Market Force
Are ‘Miracle Cures’ Sustainable, Given High Cost of Care?
San Francisco—Less than 1% of Americans use specialty drugs, yet the medications now account for 38% of the nation’s pharmacy drug spending. The figure is expected to rise further as more orphan and other specialty drugs pass through g the regulatory g yp pipeline, p , accordingg to speakers p at the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy’s AMCP 2016 meeting.
San Francisco—About a decade ago, Steven G. Avey was diagnosed with mantle cell lymphoma. His doctors told him it was likely incurable. But then they prescribed a specialty medication, rituximab (Rituxan, Genentech) in combination with four other chemotherapy drugs. “Without it, I wouldn’t have made it,” said Mr. Avey, a vice president of the specialty clinical team with MedImpact Healthcare Systems, with headquarters in San Diego. As he noted to an audience at Specialty Pharmacy Connect, a special session of the Academy of Managed
OPERATIONS & MGMT Panel at MHA Summit tackles trends in specialty pharmacy ........
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CLINICAL
see COST OF CURE, page 18
The shifting cost of factor therapy for hemophilia .................
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Safety tips for at-home infliximab infusions ........
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How much attention should be paid to cancer/psoriasis link?.....
TECHNOLOGY PATH Pro e-tool drives generic utilization— and savings .......................
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ASK THE EXPERT Stacey Ness, PharmD, on MHA Inc. members’ inroads into specialty pharmacy ............................
Grass-Roots Effort Drives Advocacy For Home Infusion
“By 2018, we could see half of all pharmaceutical drug spending on specialty medications,” said Aimee Tharaldson, PharmD, the senior clinical consultant for emerging therapeutics at Express Scripts, and a conference presenter. “Over the last six years, the FDA has approved more specialty than traditional drugs, and that trend is expected to continue.” The FDA approved a record number of 56 drugs last year, of which 33 were specialty medications. Most were orphan drugs and almost half were oral medications. So far this year, the FDA has approved 10 additional specialty drugs. More specialty drugs means more medications for conditions previously difficult to treat or incurable, such as hepatitis C (HCV). It also means a whole lot of money exchanging hands. HCV treatment would cost the health care system $160 billion if all 3.2 million infected individuals in the United States were treated, noted Doug Long, BS, MBA, the vice president of industry relations at IMS Health, and another conference speaker.
Las Vegas—Advocacy for home infusion may seem complicated, but it’s really not; it comes down to developing relationships with legislators and their staffers and communicating a simple but precise message, a panel of experts said at the 13th Annual MHA Business Summit. There’s certainly a need for such advocacy, noted panelist Paul Mastrapa, the president and CEO of Option Care. “The understanding of what we do is borderline nonexistent,” he said. During one Capitol Hill meeting he had in 2008 with a young congressman, the legislator mistook the term home infusion for a call to start building homes.
see PIPELINE, page 5
see ADVOCACY, page 8
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New Product
For late-breaking coverage of
Asembia Specialty Pharmacy Summit, see pages 4 and 14. Innovatix launches Accreditation Advisory Services. See page 17
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