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Turning Knowlege 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.
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.
“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 a fee-for-service business unit, on the path to begin generating revenue for the college.
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.
“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.
In 2019, the DIG went in yet another direction with Illinois Medicaid, prompted by a new state law requiring the establishment of an evidence-based, noncommercial educational program for Medicaid prescribers consisting of a web-based curriculum and academic educator outreach. This endeavor is known as Illinois ADVANCE, which stands for “Academic Detailing Visits and New Evidence CEnter.”
“Think of a pharmacy rep from a drug company calling on a doctor, trying to promote a product,” explains Mary Moody, BS ’79. “Academic detailing is the same concept, but we’re doing it with accurate, noncommerical, unbiased information.”
In developing this new role for pharmacists, the DIG’s academic detailing program has grown to become the largest in the nation. In its collaboration with Illinois Medicaid, UIC pharmacists travel throughout the state to conduct one-on-one appointments that currently focus on two conditions: opioid overdose and diabetes.
“These are two clinical situations that have a huge impact on Medicaid, so we’re working to try to improve prescribing and reduce negative outcomes.” says Moody, who oversees the DIG’s relationship with Illinois Medicaid. Moody, who was one of the three existing staff members at the DIG when Gabay came on board, has practiced in drug information for more than 40 years— more than half of which she’s spent at UIC.
In addition to academic detailing, which also provides prescribers with continuing medical education credits, Illinois ADVANCE offers online educational programs for physicians to enhance the material covered in the visits.
Today, as a result of the DIG’s efforts, Illinois Medicaid’s relationship with the university has expanded to include other units, like the College of Medicine, which is an integral partner in Illinois Doc Assist, which engages child psychiatrists at the university to provide phone consultations to prescribers who care for Medicaid patients.
“It is housed within the College of Medicine,” Moody says, “but the College of Pharmacy serves as a resource to help the agency look for ways to, again, get better care to our Medicaid patients, so our relationship with [Illinois Medicaid] is critical, because we serve as a gateway to other resources throughout the university.”
In fact, the university’s Office of Medicaid Innovation, with which Moody works closely, is a system-wide unit that was established to investigate synergies between the University of Illinois and Illinois Medicaid to improve care.
“As the State of Illinois’s public university, it makes sense for Medicaid to partner with us to make use of the great resources that we have to improve the outcomes of our Medicaid recipients,” says Moody. “It’s a great opportunity to show the expertise that we have at the university and to utilize that resource appropriately.”
Of course, as an academic unit, the DIG also engages in instruction, including a residency program first conceived in 1987 but recently revamped to focus on what Gabay calls nontraditional drug information practice. “Now we focus more on what the resident is interested in making of it rather than traditional drug information practice” he says. As a result, residents can spend time in industry, managed care, academia, and medication use policy or safety.
Moody, who admits to having a passion for drug information practice, was not expecting her career to take a turn with such a significant impact on public policy.
“I wouldn’t have picked it, but I love it,” she says. “I like thinking about the ways that we can improve the quality of care for our underrepresented populations, and our Medicaid population is often at risk for a lot of chronic diseases, so if there are ways that we can improve their ability to manage those, it’s exciting.”
Gabay, who has served as director of the DIG since 2007, believes the department’s work is crucial in today’s healthcare system because of its broader influence.
“[Drug information] addresses health issues more on a population level rather than on an individual patient level,” he says. “The documents and initiatives we are working on can impact and improve care for numerous people.”
