Turning Knowledge into Profit at the DIG BY JESSICA CANLAS
When it comes to clientele, UIC’s Drug Information Group (DIG) can do some serious name-dropping.
a fee-for-service business unit, on the path to begin generating revenue for the college.
Takeda Pharmaceuticals, the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, Abelson Taylor—these are just a few of approximately 30 active contracts the DIG holds with healthcare companies and organizations to provide services ranging from formulary reviews to database development and training programs for sales representatives and medical-science liaisons.
One of its newer, less traditional relationships is with the BlueCross BlueShield Association, which sends the DIG about 25 evidence reviews a month to update. Topics range from drug therapies to genetic tests and surgical procedures.
“The setup we have at UIC is extremely unique,” says Michael Gabay, clinical professor and director of the Drug Information Group.” Very few [colleges of pharmacy] have a drug information center at all. Many have shut down over the last decades when funding mechanisms dried up.” Gabay joined UIC in 1998, when the unit consisted of only himself and three other full-time faculty. Today, the DIG includes more than 50 full-time and adjunct staff. What set the DIG apart—and allowed it to thrive— was a change to its practice model in 1997 when it was required to become self-supporting. The following year, the DIG contracted with its first major, long-term client, Cardinal Health—a relationship that continues to this day—providing drug information services for approximately 200 hospital pharmacies and setting the DIG, as
“We search the literature, update guidelines, and work with their physicians to enhance existing documents and determine if there’s any impact on policies that they implement for their [health insurance] plans that fall under BlueCross BlueShield,” Gabay explains. Another notable, and perhaps most extensive, interagency agreement the DIG holds is with the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, more commonly known as Illinois Medicaid. For the last 15 years or so, the DIG has collaborated with the state on numerous and various aspects of the organization’s pharmacy service, starting out by preparing therapeutic class reviews to help determine which drugs to include on their formulary. Several years down the road, the DIG took on a new role with Illinois Medicaid when the State of Illinois passed new legislation requiring patients taking more than four prescriptions a month to undergo an automatic review. The DIG was tasked with examining patient medical records to ensure those multiple medications were necessary.
