Dr Brandon Newman Discusses Payer, Academic Medical Center Collaboration

Brandon Newman, PharmD, MMHC, CSP, program director, specialty pharmacy, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, explains the benefits of collaboration between payers and academic centers and how this collaboration, in turn, benefits patients.

Transcript

What are the benefits of collaboration between payers and academic medical centers?

I think 1 thing, from my perspective in working for a dispensing pharmacy that’s based out of an academic medical center, is that first and foremost, we have to be able to dispense these drugs to these patients so we can follow the patients really closely. So, 1 big challenge with us is payer lockout. I think that if we can collaborate with a payer to be able to become part of that network to be able to fill for those patients, we can follow them closely, and, by following them closely, we can monitor their long-term clinical outcomes. I think that’s really where we can work closely with payers to make sure that patients are responding appropriately to these high-cost meds.

What are different examples of opportunities payers and academic centers can collaborate on?

I think 1 example of a way payers and manufacturers can collaborate is by a payer allowing a health system specialty pharmacy into their network and then by giving thresholds for the specialty pharmacy to be able to meet. Really, what that does is it holds the bar high so that patients are getting really good quality care, and then by providing this data back to the payer, they can use it for their analytics and benchmarking and be able to determine that patients are getting the best benefits and that the specialty pharmacy is doing a great job.

How does this collaboration, in turn, benefit patients?

What we found from patients that use our specialty pharmacy is that the satisfaction surveys are really good. We follow these patients really closely, make sure they’re doing well and not having any side effects, and managing those medications. The patients are really happy about that. We’re able to provide very personalized service. The patients meet the pharmacist face to face in clinic, they get phone calls as a follow-up from the pharmacist, and they’re very happy with it. We have very good satisfaction surveys that go to show that patients are happy with our service.