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    RxAmerica and Sharp Health Defy National Trend, Cut Prescription Drug Costs January 14, 2002 - SALT LAKE CITY, UT: RxAmerica, a leading national pharmacy benefits manager (PBM), announced today its partner Sharp Health Plan saved over $1.6 million during 2001 after implementing RxAmerica's step-therapy program. In 2001, prescription drug costs increased by more than 17% and are projected to rise at the same rate in 2002. In contrast to that trend, Sharp Health Plan's average per member per month (PMPM) cost for 2001 actually decreased by 1.7% for the year. More impressively, after implementing RxAmerica's step-therapy program, the total costs for one of Sharp's largest health plans, Sharp Commercial, actually decreased 7.5% over the previous year's total. The program's results are even more remarkable when compared to recent cost trends at Sharp. From 1999 to 2000, before implementing the program with RxAmerica, the Sharp Advantage plan experienced a per member per month cost increase of 25%. Costs for the Sharp Commercial plan grew more than 7% over the same period. "The people at Sharp Health Plan are the real heroes of this story," says John Gardynik, RxAmerica's President. "They were committed to finding a way to simultaneously improve treatment for their members while controlling spiraling prescription drug costs. The step-therapy program helped them do both." Nora Faine, M.D., Medical Director for Sharp Health Plan agrees.
"Sharp Health has long been committed to providing our members with the best
health care treatment at the best value, but rising pharmacy costs were
proving to be a real challenge for us. RxAmerica created a targeted program
that focused on only a few specific therapeutic categories that needed to be
controlled. The
RxAmerica's step-therapy programs employ a four-step process. First, RxAmerica performs a clinical analysis of a plan's historical claims data to create baseline and projected pharmacy utilization trends by therapeutic class. Second, the company identifies and targets a select group of high cost medications within individual therapeutic classes that have a low likelihood of producing any significant therapeutic gains and represent a relatively poor value. Third, RxAmerica formulates a set of clinically based protocols to improve the efficacy of treatment and control costs for the plan. Finally, the company proactively educates participating physicians and pharmacies on the appropriate use of the first-line therapies and protocols. In Sharp's case, RxAmerica's analysis of historical claims data identified a select set of therapies that contributed significantly to the inflationary trend, but showed only marginal therapeutic success. Armed with this information, the company identified physicians who were utilizing the targeted therapies. The selected physicians were then sent extensive educational materials covering the scope of the program, its purpose and the suggested step-therapy protocols and guidelines. In many cases, medical and pharmacy personnel from Sharp and RxAmerica met with the physician to further explain and introduce the program. To further supplement these implementation efforts, the network pharmacy providers were also educated on the goals and directives of the program. Doing so enabled Sharp's network pharmacists to reinforce the program's message to members at the point of sale. To date the program has been very well received by members and physicians and has been an unqualified success in terms of controlling costs. RxAmerica is a leading Pharmacy Benefits Manager that specializes in controlling costs, creating customized solutions and delivering best-in-class customer service. RxAmerica provides prescription drug benefits for more than 4.5 million individuals nationwide. With a retail network of more than 53,000 pharmacies, RxAmerica delivers innovative prescription drug programs that improve the health of members while lowering drug benefit costs for its clients. For further information, contact RxAmerica at 1-800-770-8014 or visit RxAmerica's website at www.rxamerica.com. |
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Program has enabled us to control costs without affecting the high quality treatment we deliver to our members. Our successful
partnership with RxAmerica will enable us to continue delivering exceptional
value to our membership - both today and for many years to come."