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Valeant Pharmaceuticals rout put specialty pharmacies under an unwelcome spotlight. But though Valeant's own close relationship with Philidor RX may be an unusual one--a host of Big Pharma and Big Biotech companies have now denied similar arrangements--tight links between drug marketing and specialty pharmacies are increasingly common industry wide…Valeant is hardly alone in depending on a specialty pharmacy for sales success. What began as a technique for getting "complex, costly drugs"--often orphan meds for rare diseases--to the appropriate patients has become a broadly used marketing technique…Pharma's pricing and marketing moves are going to stay on center stage for some time.

Hortense Jones of Durham...2015 Pharmacy Technician of the Year…Jones works at Durham’s Lincoln Community Health Center as the pharmacy technician supervisor, where she oversees a team of 11 pharmacy technicians…"I am truly humbled by this honor, but this is about our pharmacy team more than me," Jones said. "My leadership philosophy is to find the strengths of each employee and build an essential role for them on the team that matches their assets. As a result, they become fully engaged in advancing patient safety."

Marc O'Connor, chief operating officer of Curant Health, discusses methods Curant uses to maintain adherence to specialty drug regimens.

David Lassen, chief clinical officer at Prime Therapeutics, discusses the potential long term impact from biosimilars on the specialty drug landscape.

..Duexis is a combination of two old drugs, the generic equivalents of Motrin and Pepcid…If prescribed separately, the two drugs together would cost no more than $20 or $40 a month. By contrast, Duexis, which contains both in a single pill, costs about $1,500 a month…Needless to say, many insurers do not want to pay for Duexis. Yet sales of the drug are growing rapidly, in large part because its manufacturer, Horizon Pharma, has figured out a way to circumvent efforts of insurers and pharmacists to switch patients to the generic components, or even to the over-the-counter versions…It is called "Prescriptions Made Easy." Instead of sending their patients to the drugstore with a prescription, doctors are urged by Horizon to submit prescriptions directly to a mail-order specialty pharmacy affiliated with the drug company. The pharmacy mails the drug to the patient and deals with the insurance companies, relieving the doctor of the reimbursement hassle that might otherwise discourage them from prescribing such an expensive drug...Horizon is not alone. Use of specialty pharmacies seems to have become a new way of trying to keep the health system paying for high-priced drugs.

Ron Lanton – Government Affairs Strategist for the Pharmacy Podcast Show interviews Phil LaFoy with Blount Specialty Pharmacy.

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Health systems’ interest in gaining entry to the specialty-pharmacy market should not be a surprise, considering that specialty drug sales are growing at rates reported to be approximately 19% per year… the 340B pricing program could offer substantial incentives to certain qualifying health systems when they retain specialty-pharmacy prescriptions… Add in the trend of health systems’ entry into risk-sharing contracts, the formation of accountable care organizations, and the consolidation and merging of specialist physician practices… Health systems bring a number of advantages to the specialty marketplace… full integration and availability of clinical information to multidisciplinary health care providers allows for a level of care coordination that is unlikely to be matched by unaffiliated pharmacies.

Jay Greco, RPh, owner of Jersey Shore Pharmacy, discusses significant issues causing difficulties for specialty pharmacy.

Prices for specialty drugs in the United States are out of control, with spending rising much faster than in many other health care domains. Some state Medicaid programs have been driven to the brink by the cost of new drugs for diseases such as hepatitis C, for which 12 weeks of treatment with Sovaldi can cost nearly $100,000…paying for drugs according to how well they actually work…A drug that works is worth something; one that doesn’t is not. If a new drug works no better than an older one, the two have equal worth. If a drug costs a lot, that’s OK only if it makes people so healthy that it reduces their spending on other forms of health care...