Managed Care Pharmacy Issues

E-prescribing is the use of health care technology to improve prescription accuracy, increase patient safety, and reduce costs as well as enable secure, real-time, bi-directional, electronic connectivity between clinicians and pharmacies. This is achieved by providing prescribers with a secure means of electronically accessing health plan formulary, patient eligibility, and medication history at the point of care and securely transmitting the prescription electronically into the pharmacy’s computer system.

Formulary management is an integrated patient care process which enables physicians, pharmacists and other health care professionals to work together to promote clinically sound, cost-effective medication therapy and positive therapeutic outcomes. Effective use of health care resources can minimize overall medical costs, improve patient access to more affordable care and provide an improved quality of life.

Medication errors are among the most common medical errors, harming at least 1.5 million people every year. The extra medical costs of treating drug-related injuries occurring in hospitals alone are at least to $3.5 billion a year, and this estimate does not take into account lost wages and productivity or additional health care costs.

The Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) is concerned about the harmful effects that medication stockpiling could have on individual patients, as well as the population as a whole. The Academy is providing this document as a means of educating the public about the unintended and potentially harmful results of medication stockpiling, and to remind health care providers of the role that they play in preventing these occurrences.

Press Release: Focusing on what’s best for the patient, leveraging technology to perform real-time benefit checks, and developing trust and transparency among stakeholders are some of the suggestions to emerge from AMCP’s recent Partnership Forum on “Optimizing Prior Authorization for Appropriate Medication Selection.”

Common managed care terms and their meaning.

Learn how managed care pharmacy can play a vital role in patient-centered medical homes.

The concise policy statements included in the AMCP Practice Positions are part of an ongoing process that documents the AMCP's position on professional and practice issues. These practice positions will serve to aid AMCP members in describing their roles and serves as the basis for AMCP’s public policy statements. they also aid in advancing AMCP’s positions to target audiences. These policy statements, approved by AMCP’s Board of Directors, cover a wide range of pharmacy and practice issues and have been derived from existing AMCP Legislative & Regulatory Positions, Medicare Part D Series, Concept Papers, and other policy statements.

List of Forum topics for 2019. For additional information, contact: AMCP’s Strategic Alliances & Corporate Services Office | busdevelopment@amcp.org | (703) 684-2616

AMCP letter to Congressional Leadership asking for the inclusion of 42 CFR Part 2 provisions and Medicare fraud, waste and abuse protections in a final opioid conference report