These AMCP, AMCP Learn, and Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy resources will help advance the role of value-based contracts to improve access and affordability of medications.
AMCP recognizes that many patients today depend on high‐cost specialty medications that often do not have therapeutic alternatives. Medication cost-share offset programs provide out-of-pocket discounts or free product at the point of sale.
E-prescribing is the use of health care technology to improve prescription accuracy, increase patient safety, and reduce costs as well as enable secure, real-time, bi-directional, electronic connectivity between clinicians and pharmacies. This is achieved by providing prescribers with a secure means of electronically accessing health plan formulary, patient eligibility, and medication history at the point of care and securely transmitting the prescription electronically into the pharmacy’s computer system.
Congress passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in 1996. Within that Act are privacy provisions with which covered entities (including all health plans, health care providers and health care clearinghouses [e.g. PBMs] that transmit any health information in electronic form must comply. HIPAA rules provide guidance to covered entities about how to comply with the Act.
Where We Stand: AMCP supports compensation for pharmacists providing direct patient care services. Services provided by pharmacists are a vital part of comprehensive patient care, especially when delivered in collaboration with other health care providers.
Over the past several years, the introduction, utilization and cost share of specialty pharmacy products has been increasing at a rate substantially greater than that of other pharmaceuticals. This paper examines the characteristics of specialty pharmaceuticals; the growth of new expertise to handle and manage these pharmaceuticals; and the needs these products create for patients, health plans and practitioners.
The rebate system is an important lever for ensuring the affordability of prescription medications and health care premiums for Americans. AMCP supports the use of a rebate system as one of many levers to help to control drug costs.
The Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) is concerned about the harmful effects that medication stockpiling could have on individual patients, as well as the population as a whole. The Academy is providing this document as a means of educating the public about the unintended and potentially harmful results of medication stockpiling, and to remind health care providers of the role that they play in preventing these occurrences.