According to our recent payer coverage analysis for cystic fibrosis (CF) treatments, combined with news from key healthcare influencers, market access is shifting in this drug landscape.

To help make sense of this new research, MMIT's team of experts analyzes the data and summarizes the key findings for you. The following are brief highlights. To read the full piece, including payer coverage, drug competition and prescriber trends, click here.

Topics: Market Access, Branding & Marketing, Specialty, Payer

At the annual Medicaid Health Plans of America conference, Express Scripts Holding Co. Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer Steve Miller, M.D., had a simple message for health plan leaders: "You have to think long term if you're going to have better outcomes," AIS Health reported.

One area in which Medicaid is not heeding that call, Miller said, is how it approaches treating and preventing HIV.

Topics: Specialty, Market Access, Payer

According to our recent payer coverage analysis for growth hormone treatments, combined with news from key healthcare influencers, market access is shifting in this drug landscape.

To help make sense of this new research, MMIT's team of experts analyzes the data and summarizes the key findings for you. The following are brief highlights. To read the full piece, including payer coverage, drug competition and prescriber trends, click here.

Topics: Market Access, Branding & Marketing, Specialty, Payer

Therapy for chronic migraine — a condition that's been notoriously difficult to treat and which often leads to significant direct and indirect health care costs — has been upended with the recent approval of three injectable monoclonal antibody products in a new preventive medication class that’s significantly more effective than older preventive migraine drugs, a researcher says.

These new calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) inhibitors — Amgen, Inc. and Novartis AG’s Aimovig (erenumab), Teva Pharmaceuticals’ Ajovy (fremanezumab) and Eli Lilly and Co.’s Emgality (galcanezumab) — also may usher in an era of value-based contracting for migraine products, with plan sponsors willing to pay more to get better results, Machaon Bonafede, Ph.D., outcomes research practice leader at IBM Watson Health, told attendees Oct. 23 at the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy Nexus annual meeting, AIS Health reported.

 

Topics: Payer, Specialty, Market Access, Product Release

New biosimilars for Janssen Biotech, Inc.'s Remicade (infliximab) have helped to moderate costs for Crohn's disease as they’ve launched over the last two years, but plans still rely on utilization management strategies, including site-of-service programs, to keep the cost of treating the condition under control, experts tell AIS Health.

Additional biosimilars — notably, three biosimilars for AbbVie Inc.'s Humira (adalimumab) — eventually will enter the marketplace as well, but the Humira biosimilars currently are mired in patent litigation and likely won't launch until 2023, says April Kunze, Pharm.D., senior director, clinical formulary development and trend management strategy at Prime Therapeutics LLC.

 

Topics: Payer, Specialty, Market Access, Product Release

According to our recent payer coverage analysis for ovarian cancer treatments, combined with news from key healthcare influencers, market access is shifting in this drug landscape.

To help make sense of this new research, MMIT's team of experts analyzes the data and summarizes the key findings for you. The following are brief highlights. To read the full piece, including payer coverage, drug competition and prescriber trends, click here.

Topics: Market Access, Branding & Marketing, Specialty, Payer

According to our recent payer coverage analysis for migraine treatments, combined with news from key healthcare influencers, market access is shifting in this drug landscape.

To help make sense of this new research, MMIT's team of experts analyzes the data and summarizes the key findings for you. The following are brief highlights. To read the full piece, including payer coverage, drug competition and prescriber trends, click here.

Topics: Market Access, Branding & Marketing, Specialty, Payer

When a highly potent new opioid formulation was approved by his agency on Nov. 2, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D., downplayed safety concerns about AcelRx’s Dsuvia. He stressed the importance of the painkiller for military use and the "very tight restrictions being placed on the distribution and use of this product," AIS Health reported.

In general, PBM and health plan experts say such restrictions likely will hold and keep the drug within its proper niche, and the regulatory green light for Dsuvia shouldn't interfere with broad ongoing efforts to better manage opioid use in the U.S.

 

Topics: Payer, Specialty, Market Access, Product Release

According to our recent payer coverage analysis for multiple myeloma treatments, combined with news from key healthcare influencers, market access is shifting in this drug landscape.

To help make sense of this new research, MMIT's team of experts analyzes the data and summarizes the key findings for you. The following are brief highlights. To read the full piece, including payer coverage, drug competition and prescriber trends, click here.

Topics: Market Access, Branding & Marketing, Specialty, Payer

In a move that one expert says Medicaid plans will be watching closely, Magellan Health and the drug manufacturer Otsuka America Pharmaceutical, Inc. said in August that they will work together to allow "select regional provider networks" contracted through Magellan to opt into a program involving the Abilify MyCite system, AIS Health reported.

Abilify (aripiprazole) treats schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. The MyCite system comprises Abilify tablets embedded with sensors; patches that detect and record the date and time of the pill's ingestion as well as physiological data like activity level; an app that lets patients review their data and enter additional information; and a web-based dashboard that lets providers and caregivers display and track a patient's drug ingestion patterns over time.

Topics: Specialty, Market Access, Payer