Drug Topics - January 14, 2008 - (Page 25) DRUG TOPICS 25 Cover Story Rather, “we dovetail with the plan’s choice of who they want to distribute certain drugs,” explained Judi A. Grupp, president and CEO of ACN. “If they work with Caremark, for example, Caremark supplies the drug to our facilities and those facilities then provide the services.” For community pharmacists, this assistance can be very helpful. In many cases, for example, plan provisions call for the pharmacy to store certain drugs. However, maintaining the inventory on specialty drugs is too costly for many pharmacies. In such scenarios, “we ship the drug and the dollar amount never has to change hands,” she said. Grupp’s application service provider (ASP) technology allows ACN to perform scheduling for the pharmacies. “Our clinics and pharmacies give us their preferred times to see these patients, and we do the scheduling for them.” Additionally, if a drug needs to be shipped, the system alerts pharmacists when it is to arrive and how they need to support it. “We collect all the co-pays and perform all the billing for DT CAPSULE these locations,” continued Grupp. The pharmacist’s role, meanwhile, is strictly to support the patient. “We send them the clinical protocols and a step-by-step list of tasks they need to perform outlining the data points that need to be collected and they provide the service.” Approximately 6,700 community pharmacies are currently participating in ACN, and Grupp is striving to grow the program even more. “We recently added some Medicare Part D vaccination programs to our offerings, which require us to expand the network even further with available community pharmacies who want to support these types of programs.” NCPA believes independents can succeed in specialty pharmacy if they try. Independents find their niche The key for community and independent pharmacies to succeed in specialty pharmacy is “to embrace it, get involved, and get engaged,” declared Roberts. “[Specialty pharmacy] will not be for everyone, but for those that have the interest, there will be a pharmacy-centric solution on the horizon and it will rely on the pharmacists to be an integral part of the solution and be a means to gather outcomes data and help with billing and with distribution solutions.” Grupp already sees the tide changing in favor of independents being able to compete more effectively in this era of specialty meds. Using physicians, homecare services, or outpatient centers to administer these types of meds is too costly, yet patients still must seek these services somewhere. “A two-minute injection or 15-minute infusion is too expensive for both homecare and outpatient services,” said Grupp. “That’s why plans turn to us. A lot of these community pharmacies are open later at night and on weekends. It’s absolutely ideal.” THE AUTHOR is a writer based in Atlanta.
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