Preparing for 10 Trends That Will Impact Managed Care Pharmacy

There are 10 emerging healthcare trends that will impact managed care pharmacy organizations over the next 5 years as the United States healthcare system places more emphasis on affordability, population health, and patient satisfaction and quality of care, according to a new report from the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP).

The newly released AMCP Foundation report, “Ahead of the Curve: Top 10 Emerging Health Care Trends — Implications for Patients, Providers, Payers and Pharmaceuticals,” outlines the 10 trends and their effect on the health system.

The purpose of the report, according to Edith A. Rosato, RPh, IOM, chairman of the AMCP Foundation Board of Trustees and chief executive officer of AMCP, is to assess major changes occurring in the healthcare system over the next 5 years and identify key strategies to harness the 10 trends and achieve the Triple Aim of health reform.

“To prepare for these emerging healthcare trends, various stakeholders will need to gener­ate novel solutions to improve patient metrics and tracking, enhance patient engagement and find approaches that can drive accountability, curtail costs, and incentivize quality,” according to the report.

The 10 trends in the report are as follows:

1. Migration from fee-for-service to new provider payment models
2. Consolidation of healthcare stakeholders
3. Widespread use of data and analytics in patient care
4. Spending and utilization for specialty pharmaceuticals
5. Medicaid expansion due to health reform
6. Migration to value-oriented healthcare marketplace
7. Growth and performance of accountable care organizations
8. Role of technology in patient engagement
9. Increasing patient cost sharing
10. Healthcare everywhere due to the increasing available of tools and applications

“In this fast-paced environment, it is critical to understand the shifting landscape so that organizations can anticipate changes and prioritize actions,” David Moules, vice president of Pfizer, Inc, US Payer & Channel Access, said in a statement. “The results of ‘Ahead of the Curve’ validates the biopharmaceutical industry’s efforts to discover, develop and bring to market medicines deemed to be of value to the healthcare system including those that are responsible for paying for the medicines.”