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Is oncology compatible with specialty pharmacy?
Oncology Network of Connecticut, LLC, South Windsor, CT
Beneath the Medicare upheaval there is a flood of change emerging at the private payer level. Insurers and employers are seeking greater control over the billions of dollars spent for cancer care. The easiest target: drugs. For years, managed care organizations (MCOs) have used specialty pharmacies to manage high-cost specialized drugs used for diseases other than cancer in the outpatient setting. Both MCOs and specialty pharmacies look at the high amount now spent on oncology drugs and see this as a golden opportunity.1 However, oncology care is different from the past situations where specialty pharmacy has moved in. Those of us in oncology practices understand these differences and must work as hard now to educate MCOs and specialty pharmacies as we have worked to educate Congress and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. In this article, we will look at what is specialty pharmacy, why managed care is looking to these programs as an alternative for cost management, what issues may affect the potential compatibility (or lack thereof) between quality community oncology practice and specialty pharmacy programs, and what opportunities lie ahead.
| Commun Oncol 2005;2:173–181 | full text |  206 kb |