Katie Lockhart Details How the Specialty Drug Pipeline Is Expected to Affect Payers

Pipeline forecasting can provide payers better insight into which expensive specialty drugs coming down the pipeline they should be keeping their eyes on, according to Katie Lockhart, MA, manager at Magellan Health.

Transcript:

How is the growing specialty pipeline expected to impact payers financially?

Specialty is definitely the big topic in pharma right now within payers and everything, just simply because it's really cool on the one hand being able to treat diseases that we've never been able to treat before that had very limited treatment options, which is really great. Unfortunately, though, those things also come with a high cost due to the fact that there's a high cost in manufacturing and developing some of these things like the gene therapy drugs and CAR T [chimeric antigen receptor T-cell] therapies. So, because that has a high impact on payers, payers right now are especially interested in this. Because 1 drug that could release could have a significant impact on their budget and so they need to be prepared for that.

So, that's where forecasting has come in, and has been a big part and where we've seen a lot more questions around asking about what is the potential impact of this drug. Is this a blockbuster drug? Is this something that potentially I need to be prepared for? Because it could increase my spend significantly, whereas maybe in the past, that hasn't been as true. Now, with these newer treatment options and their high cost, that is becoming a higher concern.