How Managed Care Pharmacists Can Improve Current Standards of Treatment for Parkinson Disease

Managed care pharmacists can influence several aspects of care in Parkinson disease (PD), particularly through determining clinical pathways and educating patients and providers on the latest novel agents coming to market, said Patty Taddei-Allen, PharmD, MBA, BCACP, BCGP, senior director of Clinical Analytics at WellDyne.

Transcript

AJMC®:  Hello, I'm Matthew Gavidia. Today on the MJH Life Sciences’ Medical World News, The American Journal of Managed Care^® is pleased to welcome Dr Patty Taddei-Allen, senior director of Clinical Analytics at Welldyne.

AJMC®: Can you speak on the impact of managed care pharmacists in integrating novel Parkinson disease therapies into patient care?

Dr Allen: Sure, so managed care pharmacists are really able to be involved with Parkinson disease in a variety of different ways, both from a patient-facing perspective and a nonpatient-facing perspective. Starting from a patient-facing perspective, if you're in an organization that is involved with medication therapy management or really managing those Medicare patients, then as a pharmacist involved with those managed care organizations, you're able to identify the dosing and make sure that the patient is taking their medication appropriately, and determining how that patient is responding to treatment and whether or not a different agent might be needed in order to help manage their symptoms.

From a nonpatient-facing perspective, managed care pharmacists really have a lot of influence in helping design the different clinical programs that an organization may develop to help treat patients with Parkinson disease, as well as help determine clinical pathways or clinical treatment protocols or prior authorization criteria for some of the newer agents, as well as determine formulary status and do a formulary clinical medication review with all the new agents that are coming onto the market.

AJMC®: To build on that, how can managed care pharmacists improve current guidelines for treatment of Parkinson disease?

Dr Allen: I think one of the ways that managed care pharmacists can really help improve upon that is really being able to, in essence, kind of translate the difference with some of the new agents and their different delivery systems, and why that is more impactful or what is the clinical value of that. Because some providers may think, "Well, it's the same drug so it's the same thing whether I prescribe one dosage form versus another."

In particular, with Parkinson disease, that may not always be the case. So, managed care pharmacists can really help educate providers [and] patients, as well as determine different clinical treatment pathways to make sure that all of those different nuances of the medications are being addressed.

AJMC®: Lastly, do you have any other concluding thoughts?

Dr Allen: We're hoping to be able to help manage these patients and really be able to extend the ability to really take advantage of levodopa. It's been around for decades; it is a very well generally tolerated medication, but unfortunately, it does seem to wear off and patients don't get to continue to benefit from it.

So, as we continue to explore new medications or different ways to administer that medication, I'm very hopeful that we'll be able to improve patient quality of life for patients who suffer from PD.

AJMC®: To learn more, visit our website at AJMC.com. I’m Matthew Gavidia, thanks for joining us!