AMCP: Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy

The keynote session highlighted trends in COVID-19 and other respiratory illness rates, a bounce back in health care utilization, biosimilar market trends, new product launches, and more.

Representatives from Magellan Rx Management provided a detailed overview of current treatment options in ophthalmology and the impact that biosimilars could have during a session at AMCP 2023.

Michael Burger, senior consultant at Point-of-Care Partners, explains that real-time benefit check lets physicians know how much a drug will cost the patient at the time they're writing the prescription, allowing them to give the patient a treatment they know they can afford.

In this AMCP Market Insights session, panelists discussed best practices and challenges when it comes to prescribing antibody drug conjugates, from the payer, provider, and patient perspectives, based on survey findings.

Among these treatments is an aflibercept product with improved dosing for the patient that is coming up for approval in a few months, explained Jeffrey Casberg, senior director of pharmacy at IPD Analytics.

The lower number needed to treat suggests that ruxolitinib cream may be more effective for patients with atopic dermatitis (AD), according to a poster presented at AMCP 2023.

Advantages to using surrogate vs clinical end points in drug approvals include earlier access, but there can be concerns about the efficacy and end result of the drug, said Yuqian Liu, PharmD, senior director of specialty clinical solutions at Magellan Rx Management.

Pharmacy benefit manager reform is a major trend in state managed care policy, said Adam Colborn, director of government relations at the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP).

Implementing a strategy that focuses on dose rounding for chemotherapies can have a 3-fold impact of decreasing drug costs, minimizing drug waste, and improving treatment efficiency. This strategy and its benefits were explored in a session on day 2 of AMCP 2023.

In this session at AMCP 2023, speakers broke down the challenges many managed care organizations face when wanting to collect detailed data on health disparities and proffered potential strategies that may help to facilitate gathering these data to address inequitable health care access.

Scott Soefje, PharmD, director of pharmacy cancer care at Mayo Clinic, explains the various ways drug dose rounding can reduce waste, reduce costs, and make drug administration more efficient.

Some challenges linking medication adherence to medical cost offsets include the potential of reverse causality, omitted variable bias, how adherence is measured between studies, and the outdated nature of some of the most-cited literature, said Ben Urick, PharmD, PhD, principal health outcomes researcher at Prime Therapeutics.

On the first full day of conference activity at AMCP 2023, a morning session examined prior authorization (PA) through a lens of refining the current process and the potential role of clinical trial data in PA criteria.

AMCP 2023, taking place March 21-24 in San Antonio, Texas, will feature 6 educational tracks, 3 keynote addresses, and an estimated 4000 managed care professionals in attendance.

Kimberly Westrich, director of value and access strategy at AmerisourceBergen, previews AMCP 2023 and her preconference session about incorporating value framework assessments into coverage and reimbursement decision-making.

Among the conference highlights from the annual meeting of the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) were an interview on chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapies and a session on best practices for value-based contracting.

Delayed diagnosis of wild-type transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM) results in inappropriate treatments prior to diagnosis and worse clinical outcomes after diagnosis.

More than a quarter of patients experience disruptions and delays in treatment for chronic heart failure (CHF) after the initial prescription for sacubitril/valsartan was abandoned/rejected.

Implementing changes in a health system to promote biosimilar adoption is not easy, but by implementing a program, there could be substantial savings.

The clinical effectiveness of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies adds a new weapon in the arsenal to treat patients with relapsed and refractory disease; however, they come with access, logistical, and reimbursement challenges that make it difficult to treat all the patients who could benefit.

Zahra Mahmoudjafari, PharmD, BCOP, clinical pharmacy manager at the University of Kansas Health System, gives her take on what payers should keep in mind when dealing with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies.

Value-based contracts are growing as drugs get more expensive and effective, but it’s still an emerging area with a lot of unknown and uncertainty.

Pipeline forecasting can provide payers better insight into which expensive specialty drugs coming down the pipeline they should be keeping their eyes on, according to Katie Lockhart, MA, manager at Magellan Health.

Chelsee Jensen, PharmD, pharmaceutical formulary manager at Mayo Clinic, explains how the process of implementing biosimilars may differ depending on practice size.

Soumya Vishwanath, PharmD, senior manager of formulary strategy at Magellan Rx Management, highlighted the therapeutic gaps that need to be addressed to ensure that patients with behavioral health disorders are well cared for.

In 2022 and 2023, there are a number of big therapies losing patent exclusivity, which opens the door to generics that could save as much as $30 billion.

While the pandemic will have lasting impacts on the US health care market, much of it has bounced back and returned to normal, said Doug Long, MBA, of IQVIA, during the Thursday keynote at the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy annual meeting.

Although the medication therapy management program in Tennessee's Medicaid population did not reduce costs, some adherence to medication improved and emergency department visits improved.

Jeffrey Casberg, vice president of pharmacy at IPD Analytics, discussed some of the regulatory and legal hurdles that generic and biosimilar companies have to face on the road to market launch.

Patients with severe asthma continue to have residual disease despite initiating treatment with biologics, and severe uncontrolled asthma is associated with higher economic burden compared with controlled asthma, according to 2 posters.