Pharmacy Affairs
Reimbursement/Revenue Cycle Enhancement
The Pharmacy Affairs group supports the revenue cycle process to sustain pharmacy financial targets. This is accomplished through on-going educational programs for individual hospital members, healthcare systems, or general membership. There will be a focus on government payors (CMS), private third party payors, and the more complicated reimbursements for specialized pharmaceuticals. Pharmacy Affairs participates in political advocacy on behalf or Premier membership to assure that member hospitals are fairly compensated.
Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Indigent Care/Patient Assistance Programs
Pharmacy Affairs group supports the participation in Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Indigent Care/Patient Assistance Programs (PAP) as an important resource for members to decrease bad debt and, ultimately, write-offs for products not reimbursed. These programs support improvement in patient care by allowing patients access to drugs and can assist in budget neutrality by replacing drugs, which in many circumstances may only have partial reimbursement, but in most cases no reimbursement depending on patient insurance. By assisting patients' access to drugs, we can avoid unnecessary hospitalization and utilization of services such as the ED or Clinic. Patient care is optimized.
Medication Safety
Pharmacy Affairs also reviews medication safety to support member hospitals’ medication and patient safety programs. This will be achieved, in part, by involvement in review and discussion about technology which is presented to Premier for contracting, including such items as infusion pumps, bar-codes/bedside verification systems, point of use systems, bar-coded unit of use packaging, physician order entry, and electronic medication administration systems. The Premier Safety Institute will work closely with Pharmacy Affairs on certain topics.
JCAHO Medication/Patient Safety
Patient Safety preparedness will be an important membership focus. A JCAHO Medication Issues listserv is available for member discussion.
Oncology Benchmarking Tool
The Oncology Benchmarking Tool (OBT) was developed and approved by the Premier Oncology Task Force, as a tool to help Directors of Pharmacy and Pharmacy Oncology providers track volume and financial information, important to the operation of your pharmacy department. The OBT is intended to be a data collection site for all hospital pharmacy members to populate and to be utilized to help explain variances in your drug budget as the oncology product line grows, to allow networking and benchmarking with colleagues that are addressing similar issues, and to provide a source of information to show your hospital administrators.