Oncology Pharmacy Is Critical to Modern Cancer Care: Kenneth Komorny, PharmD, BCPS

In this final interview clip, Kenneth Komorny, PharmD, BCPS, of Moffitt Cancer Center, emphasizes that oncology pharmacy is becoming increasingly essential as cancer treatments evolve, highlighting the need for highly trained pharmacists and robust data to support quality care in medically integrated dispensing (MID) models.

Watch parts 1 and 2 to learn more about MID models and their associated benefits.

This transcript was lightly edited; captions were auto-generated.

Transcript

Looking ahead, how do you see the role of oncology pharmacy evolving as cancer care becomes increasingly outpatient, oral, and personalized?

It is super important. If you look at FDA approvals of drugs, orals are outpacing injectables 2:1. That space continues to explode with the types of medications that are out there, so the need for medically integrated pharmacies is as high as it's ever been.

It's important to, one, prepare or create your medically integrated pharmacy with the best of the best pharmacists that have specialized training to go through those accreditations, really, to check and make sure that you're doing all the things that need to be done. It's important to demonstrate that through data, as we did.

Lastly, it's important for this information to get out into the generalized literature. In order to be able to act as a medically integrated pharmacy, you need to have access to the prescription. As we look at our prescriptions right now, we can fill about 46% of every prescription that we receive. We're forced to steer those to other pharmacies, including PBM [pharmacy benefit manager] specialty pharmacies, because we don't have a contract; not because we haven't asked for contracts, but because we haven't been given contracts.

It's important that, in the state of Florida, and this is similar across the country, we have legislation that requires PBMs to provide contracts to medically integrated pharmacies. This year, at our current session, we have 3 bills that are out right now. One of those bills was heard this afternoon in the House Health Committee, and we're optimistic that with this legislation, we will have access to be able to fill prescriptions for our patients.