National Pharmaceutical Council

The National Pharmaceutical Council (NPC), a health policy research organization dedicated to the advancement of good evidence, science and medical innovation, announced the appointment of Sharon Phares, PhD, MPH, as chief scientific officer.

Kimberly Westrich, MA, vice president of health services research at the National Pharmaceutical Council, discusses opportunities for growth regarding value-based benefits.

Kimberly Westrich, MA, vice president of health services research at the National Pharmaceutical Council, discusses value-based benefit design strategies for high-deductible health plans.

Kimberly Westrich, MA, vice president of health services research at the National Pharmaceutical Council, speaks on common misconceptions when designing value-based benefits.

Kimberly Westrich, MA, vice president of health services research at the National Pharmaceutical Council, discusses the shift to a value-based system from a fee-for-service one and how the health care system can incentivize high-value care.

Stakeholders discuss barriers and solutions to employer engagement on value assessment, which includes redefining goals to that of the employer and patient, and moving beyond the scope of cost and clinical outcomes.

Matthew Reynolds, PhD, vice president of real-world evidence at IQVIA, discusses findings of a recent paper with the National Pharmaceutical Council on how COVID-19 affected real-world data and research, as well as implications for future studies.

Panelists of a session at the Pharmacy Quality Alliance 2021 Annual Meeting explore how shared decision-making and patient decision aids can promote appropriate care and treatment adherence, as well as lower cost and utilization of health care services.

During a webinar, experts discussed where health care has improved life expectancy and the relationship between cost and relative contribution that each area makes to life improvement and expectancy.

Discussions around healthcare spending have been ignored for decades, but Robert Dubois, MD, PhD, chief science officer and executive vice president at National Pharmaceutical Council, believes we have the ability to start those discussions now.

Coverage of the “decisions at the point of purchase” segment for the Health Spending: Moving from Theory to Action event at the National Press Club in Washington D.C.

Representatives from different parts of the healthcare system, as well as an outside observer, weighed in on whether the reports issued by the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) are taking away patient choice.

Interviews with Joey Mattingly, PharmD, MBA, of the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, and Robert Dubois, MD, PhD, of the National Pharmaceutical Council from day 1 of the ISPOR 2019 annual meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana.

How to improve patient-reported measurement in oncology valued-based care is the focus of a new report from The National Pharmaceutical Council and Discern Health.

FDA has launched a process that will give real-world data generated outside clinical trials more importance than it’s had in the past—with implications for payers, drug companies, and most of all, patients.

Even if gene therapies do prove to be cost-effective in providing patients with much-needed treatments for genetic diseases, the question of how to pay for these therapies remains largely unanswered.

During a case study, employees were more willing to have less robust coverage in areas like dental, vision, and diagnostic benefits so that the group could have access to more comprehensive mental health and maternity services.

Real-world evidence helps to inform high-quality care in a number of different ways, and health information technology has really improved the quality and the caliber of real-world data available, explained Jennifer Graff, PharmD, vice president of comparative effectiveness research, National Pharmaceutical Council.

In an effort to get to the root of healthcare spending in the United States, the National Pharmaceutical Council launched the Going Below the Surface initiative.

There is widespread variation in how commercial insurers cover specialty drugs, a recent Heath Affairs study found, with only 16% of the drug-indication pairs examined covered the same way. Fewer than half were covered consistently by at least 75% of the plans.

Jason Buxbaum, MHSA, project manager, V-BID Health; and Robert Dubois, MD, PhD, chief scientific officer, National Pharmaceutical Council, discuss low-value services, their financial impact, what states are doing to address them, and challenges with addressing them.

There needs to be a national dialogue on how can we reach a point where our dollars are used wisely, patients get what they need, and we all get the innovation that we want, said Robert Dubois, MD, PhD, chief science officer and executive vice president, National Pharmaceutical Council.

We live in a society in the United States where more is better, so why would we think that when we go to the doctor that our attitude would be different, said Dr Robert Dubois, MD, PhD, chief science officer and executive vice president, National Pharmaceutical Council.

As we think about the healthcare spending situation that we’re in now, it’s kind of like Groundhog Day the movie where Bill Murray woke up each morning and relived the same day until he made changes in his life and was able to move forward, said Robert Dubois, MD, PhD, chief science officer and executive vice president, National Pharmaceutical Council.

We have been living in a groundhog world for the past several decades when it comes to healthcare spending, said Robert Dubois of the National Pharmaceutical Council (NPC) during AcademyHealth’s National Health Policy Conference, in Washington, DC. The session called When Are We Going to Get Serious About Health Care Spending in the United States? came a few days after the NPC launched an effort to have a dialogue around this issue by issuing a call for research around the topic and partnering with Health Affairs on a campaign called Going Below the Surface.

Jennifer Graff, PharmD, vice president of comparative effectiveness research at the National Pharmaceutical Council, discusses where payers receive their information and how it is used to make decisions about coverage and reimbursement.

Europe has found ways to make value-based care work, but the US market is very different, which means there are different factors in the United States that can work to encourage high-value care, according to Jennifer Graff, PharmD, vice president of comparative effectiveness research at the National Pharmaceutical Council.

The National Pharmaceutical Council (NPC) today published a letter outlining its thoughts on the FDA draft guidance regarding manufacturer communications about off-label uses of drugs. Today was the final day to comment on the draft before the agency begins to formulate the final version of the guidance.