Health Plan of San Joaquin CEO speaks at national gathering (Central Valley Business Journal E-Edition, March 20, 2015)
(French Camp, CA) – Health Plan of San Joaquin (HPSJ) CEO Amy Shin was a presenter at the national Association for Community Affiliated Plans (ACAP) 2015 Spring Board Meeting, on March 18, in Portland, Oregon. Her topic was: Managing High-Cost Prescription Drugs.
Because of their high cost and potential utilization, the recently approved prescription drugs for treatment of hepatitis C have received much attention in California and nationwide. However, there are many high-cost drugs and biologics entering the market for a variety of conditions. These range from genetically-typed cancer drugs to orphan drugs developed to treat conditions such as cystic fibrosis. ACAP members heard what regional and community-focused health plans – like HPSJ – are doing to better manage the influx of specialty drugs while maintaining access to quality patient care and assuring long range fiscal viability for the plans.
Presenting to the ACAP meeting, Shin, an ACAP board member, said that left uncontrolled, such costs are not sustainable. Shin focused on five disease categories with high drug treatment costs (cancer, hemophilia, rheumatoid arthritis, pulmonary hypertension, and Hepatitis C), how many HPSJ members were treated, and the resulting impact on overall HPSJ drug costs (March 1, 2014 through February 28, 2015). During that time, 453 (.00151%) of HPSJ’s almost 300,000 members were treated with $11.2M in prescription drugs, representing 12% of HPSJ’s $94.2M annual drug expenditure.
Central Valley Business Journal E-Edition, March 20, 2015