Radar on Specialty Pharmacy

After increasing its share in Shields Health Solutions last year, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. has entered into an agreement to purchase the remaining stake of the health system-owned specialty pharmacy integrator. The move, says one industry expert, may represent one more step in putting independent specialty pharmacies out of business.

After making incremental investments in Shields, Walgreens said on Sept. 20 that it would purchase the remaining 30% stake for approximately $1.37 billion. Shields — which partners with health systems to help them create and grow a hospital-owned specialty pharmacy program — has served more than 1 million people and has almost 80 health system partners that represent nearly 1,000 hospitals across the U.S. Shields will operate as a separate business and brand within Walgreens.

Sept. 9: The FDA approved Bristol Myers Squibb’s Sotyktu (deucravacitinib) for the treatment of adults with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis who are candidates for systemic therapy or phototherapy. The agent is a first-in-class, oral, selective, allosteric tyrosine kinase 2 (TYK2) inhibitor. The recommended dosage of the tablet is 6 mg once daily. The list price for a 30-day supply is $6,164.

Sept. 9: The FDA approved Spectrum Pharmaceuticals, Inc.’s Rolvedon (eflapegrastim-xnst) to decrease the incidence of infection, as manifested by febrile neutropenia, in adults with nonmyeloid malignancies receiving myelosuppressive anti-cancer drugs associated with clinically significant incidence of febrile neutropenia. The manufacturer says it is the first novel long-acting granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) approved in more than 20 years. The recommended dose is 13.2 mg administered subcutaneously once per chemotherapy cycle. The company says it expects the product to be available in fourth-quarter 2022.

Multiple companies are offering copay maximizer — also known as variable copay — programs. And while they may be attractive to firms that implement them, a closer look might reveal them to be not as appealing as they seem at first blush, say industry experts. The programs also are being challenged in legal settings, including a lawsuit by manufacturer Johnson & Johnson against SaveOnSP (see story).

Traditionally, when a manufacturer provides copay assistance for one of its drugs, that dollar amount would count toward the patient’s deductible and out-of-pocket maximum. But copay maximizer programs will distribute 100% of available manufacturer copay offset funds over 12 months, as opposed to copay accumulators, which apply the maximum manufacturer assistance up front and deplete that contribution before the end of the year. Payments in both approaches do not count toward members’ deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums.

Multiple companies that provide alternate funding options for patients have been launching over the last several years. But one maximizer company has found itself the target of a legal battle with manufacturer Johnson & Johnson over its strategy to reclassify drugs and maximize the copay assistance it gets from pharma manufacturers.

Copay maximizers have companies classify some drugs as “non-essential health benefits” (NEHBs) as outlined in the Affordable Care Act (ACA). They then secure patient assistance for these drugs through manufacturers’ or charitable foundations’ patient assistance programs, taking the full annual amount of assistance per drug and spreading out that money over the course of the year (see story). The programs are seen as follow-on offerings to copay accumulators, which take the maximum assistance up front and deplete the contribution before the end of the year.