Metro Areas Where Employers Influence Cancer Coverage Costs. Employers currently represent approximately 60% of the commercial insurance market dollars. The Employer commercial insurance market consists of more than 95,000 companies with self-insured plans, eighty percent of whom have less than 2,000 employees. Entering 2017, these employers face double-digit increases in the cost of prescription drugs […]
Amber Specialty Pharmacy leads patient satisfaction. Amber Pharmacy, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hy-Vee, is the No. 1 ranked specialty pharmacy in the U.S. for patient satisfaction with pharmacy employees, according to a recent Zitter Health Insights survey. The survey assessed numerous aspects of patient satisfaction and garnered responses from more than 3,000 patients across 38 […]
Employer Perspectives Specialty Drug Step-Therapy Program Evaluation American Health and Drug Benefits, September 2016 Vol 9, No 6 – Industry Trends Matthew Harman, PharmD, MPH, Director, Clinical Pharmacy Strategies Employers Health, Columbus, OH F. Randy Vogenberg, PhD, RPh, Strategic Advisor and Co–Project Leader, Midwest Business Group on Health National Employer Biologics & Specialty Drug Initiative […]
Insurers-Hospitals Face Cost Structure Change Insurance fundamentals (risk) that supersede the ACA are driving changes seen in coverage, and at a more rapid pace each year, resulting from ACA impacts. One of those changes has been a significant increase in the use of alternate sites of care (ASOCs) due to medical policy changes driven by […]
VA Extending Hepatitis C Therapy as its drug spend for the disease increases rapidly. The department last year allocated $696 million for new hepatitis C drugs, accounting for 17 percent of the VA’s total pharmacy budget. In fiscal 2016, which began Oct. 1, 2015, the VA expects to spend about $1 billion on hepatitis C […]
Impact of Commercial Insurance in 2017 – Considerable attention and planning has been focused on the Medicare market, but as we see from the chart below, Medicare represents approximately 13% of the total population. Employer 49% Medicaid 19% Medicare 13% Uninsured 10% Non-Group 6% Other Public 2% (Source: Kaiser Family Foundation) A recent Mercer […]
Oncology care marketing increasing in the U.S. marketplace. However, continuing benefit coverage planning for 2017 are also topics that are receiving increasing attention—to include cancer care. Just as the new oncology product pipeline is providing new options or treatments for a wide variety of cancers, market stakeholders are continuing to adjust their daily practices around providing […]
Many of the 2016 top healthcare market trends began back in 2012-to-2014, and finally emerged more clearly in 2015 for commercially insured populations. This year Access Market Intelligence identifies four (4) major themes emerging that creates the top trends to watch in 2016 into 2017. Themes encapsulating the Top Trends are Macro Issues Trending […]