Fighting Specialty Drug Costs

To help control rising specialty drug costs, the National Business Group on Health has issued a lengthy report including 5 public policy recommendations they hope will educate the marketplace and encourage effective, strategic partnerships.

According to NBGH officials, plan design is the key to managing the use of specialty prescriptions as well as the costs. The report details progress resulting from the aggressive use of utilization review, case management and prior authorization for specialty drugs. Other measures yielding positive results are the design of a specialty tier into the benefits plan and taking measures to administer specialty prescriptions in a facility separate from the hospital. Prescriptions authorized by a hospital or billed under the medical benefit are harder to track and often more costly.