The Prescription Blame Game

As prescription drug costs continue to rise and corresponding attention is being paid to the roles that pharmaceutical companies are perceived to be taking in the rise in drug prices, there are a number of organizations that are pointing fingers towards who should “take the blame” for rising prices.

However, while the blame may be attributable to pharmaceutical companies, there are a number of factors that need to be considered before judgements are made in the “Blame Game” for prescription drug costs. From a pharmaceutical company standpoint, one of the largest considerations that needs to be made is in relation to the costs of developing prescription drugs. 

According to the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development, the average cost of developing a FDA-approved prescription medication is $2.6 billion dollars. In addition to that figure for a successful medication, there are also billions of dollars that are spent on a yearly basis for other medications that do not make it to the market.

While the perception is that drug manufacturers set prices and increase them when demand is high, the truth is that most prescription drug prices are set by insurance companies, pharmacies, hospital and pharmacy. For these organizations, the prices that are created are often done so to offset costs that can be related to prescription non-adherence and a number of related factors.

Patient adherence with prescription medication is an ongoing concern for nearly everyone involved in the healthcare spectrum. One of the focus areas for many organizations in the healthcare field, including pharmacy benefit managers and insurance companies, is finding ways to simplify the process related to Prior Authorization for prescription medication.

One of the areas that is gaining interest from a number of parties involved is the ideas of creating an Electronic Prior Authorization (ePA) standard that would streamline the process for Prior Authorization through mobile access. The creation of a mobile ePA process would help to improve patient adherence to prescription medication protocols by eliminating many of the barriers related to cost and length of approval processes to increase administrative efficiencies, manage health information security and expedition of the approval process to help lower overall costs and ease of obtaining prescriptions.

As a component of streamlining the process related to enhancing prescription compliance and reducing overall healthcare costs, RxEOB offers a number of member engagement and reporting products, as well as products that assist PBM’s, insurance companies and healthcare providers with workflow and web service delivery to assist in managing and eliminating costs associated with prescription non-adherence.

RxEOB works with a number of healthcare organizations to help increase prescription adherence, minimize prescription “blaming” and to drive better patient healthcare outcomes. To learn more about how RxEOB can assist your healthcare organization, please contact us at 888-648-0989 ext. 226, or email us at info@rxeob.com.