Submit your nominations for AMCP's Individual Contribution Award and Grassroots Advocacy Award and FMCP’s Steven G. Avey Award. This is your opportunity to nominate your peers or yourself for outstanding contributions to the Academy. These prestigious awards will recognize individuals for their accomplishments, and their commitment and dedication to the profession of managed care pharmacy. Nominations are due by July 31, 2009, for the Steven G. Avey Award, and by August 14, 2009, for the Individual Contribution and Grassroots Advocacy awards.

The Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) has endorsed bipartisan legislation that would create a regulatory pathway for the approval of follow-on biologics and allow competition on brand-name biologics after five years of marketing exclusivity instead of the pharmaceutical industry’s preferred 14-year window. AMCP strongly supports H.R. 1427 and S. 729, the “Promoting Innovation and Access to Live-Savings Medicine Act of 2009,” the Academy said in a June 22 letter to Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). Waxman and Schumer are lead sponsors of the respective bills.

The Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy joined 11 national pharmacy organizations in a letter to Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, applauding the pharmacist-delivered medication therapy management (MTM) language in the “Affordable Health Choices Act.” The bill had not been assigned a number as of June 16. The letter expresses support for two provisions AMCP participated in negotiating: Section 213 that would provide grants to implement pharmacist-delivered MTM services for the treatment of chronic disease and Section 212 to provide community health teams working within a medical home model the support necessary for local primary care providers to provide access to pharmacist-delivered MTM services, including medication reconciliation. This letter is being shared with members of the Senate Finance Committee, as well as members on the three House committees of jurisdiction. The letter is available here. 

The Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy commends the overall goals of the “Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Act of 2009,” S. 1213, introduced this week by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.). The legislation builds on comparative-effectiveness research legislation introduced last year by the senators, and focuses primarily on comparative “clinical-effectiveness” research. AMCP maintains that comparative-effectiveness research also should include an examination of “cost-effectiveness” factors.