NPC in Chain Drug Review: Preserving the Proven Impact of Biopharmaceutical Innovation

In his latest commentary for Chain Drug Review, NPC President and Chief Executive Officer Dan Leonard considers the challenges in measuring and paying for value in health care, particularly when it comes to biopharmaceuticals. While paying for value is a relatively easy concept to understand, it is infinitely more difficult to execute – especially when trying to capture transformative new therapies that can lead to a cure or a significant health improvement over a patient’s lifetime with a single treatment. Organizations attempting to capture the value don’t always look at the value over the full course of treatment, which can lead to an incomplete understanding of a medicine’s value.

To illustrate these challenges, Mr. Leonard highlights a recent NPC study published in the Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy that looked retrospectively at the eight most serious diseases and conditions affecting Americans since 1990, and the interventions responsible for associated health benefits and improved outcomes. The majority of physicians (56%) felt that improvements in health innovation were driven by pharmaceuticals, raising the possibility that we are actually under-investing in them as the most valuable facet of health technology.

>> Read the full column on understanding value in biopharmaceutical innovation in Chain Drug Review.