At the CBI Biosimilars Summit in January, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel comprising three experts, including Jesse Peterson, clinical development manager at Fairview Specialty Pharmacy. The topic of conversation was stakeholder education, which Peterson is well-equipped to speak about, given his position at regional specialty pharmacy. In his role, Peterson works with experts across the pharmacy operations team and manages relationships with the health system’s payer partners and manufacturers. He is responsible for sharing updates on the future of the specialty pipeline internally and with payers, as well as identifying areas where potential savings could be realized.
A few months ago, I read a fabulous Q&A in Managed Care Magazine featuring oncologist Gary Lyman and co-director of the Hutchinson Institute for Cancer Outcomes Research at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. In this day and age, we regularly come across surveys or discussions emphasizing how much more work we have to do in the education realm to ensure physicians’ comfort with biosimilars. But after reading Lyman’s interview on one cold, dreary January day, I felt buoyed. That’s not to say there isn’t more work to be done, of course. But it was reassuring to see a prominent member of the oncology community express such comfort and confidence in biosimilars.
Two employer experts lay out the challenges rebates pose, both for employers and biosimilar uptake, as well as the increasing importance of greater integration amongst employers and health systems from both a biosimilar utilization and an overall cost savings standpoint.
In the first of what will be a two-part article, I’ll share two employer organization experts' thoughts on current reimbursement models for biosimilars and how employers and manufacturers can to reshape these practices to bring biosimilars more regularly into employer negotiations.
As policy makers release new policies to reduce healthcare spending, it’s imperative that biosimilar companies emphasize that lowering drug prices and cutting reimbursement are not the same thing. The latter could have serious consequences for critical classes of medicines, including biosimilars.
In the first of this two-part article, I’ll discuss two current policies that could impact biosimilars in the U.S. — in particular, coding evolutions and the pass-through status debate — and some of the yet-unanswered questions they raise about reimbursement consistency between biosimilars and their reference products.
In the first of what will be two articles, I walk you through a high-level model forecast Engert shared to demonstrate that the value-capture possible after developing a biosimilar is much higher than what we may assume. In order to receive these rewards, however, there are five steps Engert outlines that a company must take to properly manage the risks that arise.
Though the FDA has taken great efforts in the past year to stand up for biosimilars and establish the BAP, one expert argues the agency can do more to confidently and simply underscore the quality of biosimilar products and to reconsider the need for the additional studies required of biosimilars, especially — but not just limited to — clinical studies.
Just as the FDA emphasized that companies should take a “step-wise” approach to biosimilar development, I’d argue this same approach needs to be embraced in our commercialization and education efforts moving forward.
Though the report does not focus specifically on the role of MSLs in the biosimilar space, there were a few salient points to note for biosimilar companies as they consider the evolving roles and integration of these teams.
