Dr Glen Stettin on Strategies for Managing High-Cost Treatments

Glen D. Stettin, MD, senior vice president of clinical, research, and new solutions at Express Scripts, discusses what strategies for managing high-cost treatments aren't working and how they could be improved.

Transcript (slightly modified)

What current strategies for managing high-cost treatments are not working or could use some improvement?

The strategies that are not working are just relying on guidelines about how medications should be used and expecting that they're going to be followed. There is lots with regards to evidence-based medicine that if fully employed there would be situations where people would be using medication differently, they might choose a different medication, they might choose to forgo to use a medication, to use it at a different dose that would drive a more effective and cost-effective outcome.

How about with specialty drugs?

I think that the challenge with specialty drugs is that given so many of them are just so expensive, there's much less margin of error that the slightest deviation from the best practice guideline has significant implications for cost.