Upcoming AMCP Sessions to Focus on Education, Patient Experience in Managed Care

Education, networking, and hands-on engagement will take center stage at the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) 2025 meeting as experts explore key issues in managed care pharmacy. Kimberly Westrich, MA, chief strategy officer at the National Pharmaceutical Council (NPC), highlights discussions on patient engagement, formulary management, and policy changes, including the Inflation Reduction Act and 340B reforms. At AMCP, attendees can also connect at a student networking reception and take part in a unique fidget cube activity designed to spark new insights.

This transcript has been edited for clarity; captions were auto-generated.

Transcript

What can attendees look forward to at this year's AMCP 2025, and what sessions are you looking to attend?

I'm excited about 3 things at AMCP 2025 this year, and they are education, networking, and play. Education is the main reason that we're going to AMCP, and I'm excited about some sessions and posters that are focused on patient engagement and making health care decision-making more patient-centered.

On Tuesday, April 1, I'm going to moderate a session that is on patient engagement and managed care pharmacy, and we'll be exploring the value of integrating the patient perspective in formulary management and benefit design. We'll be exploring recent policy developments—including some new rules from CMS—and we'll be trying to identify some opportunities to improve patient centricity in managed care practice. I'm also looking forward to sessions that focus on protecting and enhancing patient access to care in today's, shall we say, dynamic policy environment.

There are 2 sessions I'd like to call out that explore this topic. On Wednesday, NPC's president and CEO, John O'Brien, PharmD, will shed some light on the complex and evolving 340B landscape, and this will include trends in litigation and potential reforms in the 340B space. On Tuesday, my colleague Julie Patterson, PharmD, PhD, will discuss how the Inflation Reduction Act is reshaping incentives for formulary design and drug utilization and how this has ripple effects for a wide range of stakeholders, including patients, PBMs [pharmacy benefit managers], health plans, and 340B-covered entities.

My NPC colleagues are also going to present 2 posters that explore the implications of the Inflation Reduction Act for R&D [research and development] incentives.... One is by James Motyka, PharmD, and Rayan Salih, PharmD, on orphan oncology drug development. The second is Tyler Wagner, PharmD, PhD, and Haley McKeefer, PharmD, on subsequent indications and personalized medicine. That was a lot on education, which is, of course, the first category I'm looking forward to.

The second is networking, and I know I say this every time you do an interview with me about AMCP, but it's true. I really, truly look forward to connecting with the next generation of health policy leaders, and this year, NPC is sponsoring a student and new practitioner networking reception on Tuesday evening at Xochi restaurant. And it's always a great opportunity to talk with students and early career professionals and learn about their areas of interest. Where do they want to do research? What are their future career aspirations? So that's the networking area.

The third thing, and of course, this is probably what I'm most excited about, is play, and I have a visual cue. This is a fidget cube that I designed out of Lego bricks. And in the fall at [AMCP] Nexus, I did a pop-up where we built this fidget cube on-site, and we explored some of the insightful lessons that are hidden in these bricks. I'm really excited to do it again at the annual [AMCP meeting] and there are 2 ways to do it. I will do a live pop-up on Thursday morning, but not everybody is there on Thursday morning, and some people are drained on Thursday morning. There's also an asynchronous option where you can meet up with me during AMCP and pick up a kit, and I'll give you building instructions so that you can build it at your own time, and conveniently, the places to pick it up are all the educational and networking events that I just mentioned.

If you're interested in learning more about the fidget cube, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn or go to kimpossibility.com/fidgetcube, and I hope to see you at AMCP for networking, education, or a little bit of play with fidget cubes.