Rx costs up, average co-pay down
BY DREW BUONO
ST. LOUIS — Prescription drug costs may be going up, but the average patient co-pay is decreasing.
That’s the conclusion of a new study released by pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts. The company’s 2007 Drug Trend Report shows that the average co-pay dropped 25 cents to $13.20, while the average total cost of a prescription rose from $55.01 to $55.93.
Express Scripts said that the decrease in co-payments was due to greater use of generic drugs.
“When more generics are used, benefit plan sponsors can control plan costs without shifting these costs to consumers,” said Emily Cox, the company’s senior director of research and lead author of the report. On average, Cox noted, consumers saved $15 per prescription when they chose a generic over a brand-name drug.
The study showed that from 2002 through 2007, the average co-pay for preferred brand drugs increased $4.52, to $19.18. For non-pre-ferred brand drugs, the co-pay increased $11.28, to $28.44. But for generics, co-pays over the five-year span increased just 86 cents, to $7.57, the Express Scripts report indicated.
BY JIM FREDERICK
CRYSTAL LAKE, Ill. — A new, Internet- and cell phone-driven alert and communications system to help patients improve medication adherence is set to debut in a broadly based pilot project among everyday users.
Called eMedonline, the new system was developed by Leap of Faith Technologies, an online technology and communications firm. It relies on cell phone technology and bar code scanning technology to help patients remain
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The eMedonline services use a Web-based system to collect and distribute information about patient medication compliance.
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Dr. Michael Lynch plans to open a three-year school of pharmacy named the University of California at San Francisco School of Pharmacy by 2011 in Fresno, Calif.
Lynch heads a group that includes business people, medical professionals and college professors, who are trying to respond to a shortage of pharmacists in central California. The group hopes to raise $8 million to build and open the school. The goal is to complete construction and advertise for students in 2010, and start classes in August 2011.
Students would enroll after getting their undergraduate degrees elsewhere or meeting a series of undergraduate requirements. A former church was selected for the site because it is centrally located and can accommodate up to 120 students, said John Cummings, a vice president of the State Center Community College District involved with the effort.
New pharmacy schools have opened in California in recent years, including programs at Loma Linda, Vallejo, Pomona and at the University of San Diego. Efforts also are under way at Merritt College in Oakland and in Sacramento.
John Kapoor has made a $5 million investment in the University of Buffalo’s School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences through the John and Editha Kapoor Charitable Foundation.
The gift, issued as a challenge to encourage others to follow his exemplary lead, will support construction of a new home for the nationally ranked pharmacy school, as well as faculty research, student financial aid and an emerging technologies fund.
The pharmacy school is preparing to move to the university’s south campus in Buffalo, N.Y., where it will join the college’s four other health science schools that comprise the UB Academic Health Center. The new building is expected to be completed in 2011.
The Kansas state legislature approved a $50 million expansion to the Kansas University School of Pharmacy. After weeks of debate over where the money would come from, which included a veto by the governor, the expansion was approved by the legislature.
The funding is to be used to finance construction of a new pharmacy building on the university’s west campus and to add a pharmacy school to the university’s school of medicine, increasing the number of students admitted into the program from 105 to about 190 per year.
About a week after the legislation was introduced, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius vetoed the provision that called for the expansion. Sebelius said she supported construction, but she disagreed with how the legislature went about funding the project through gaming revenue.
The legislature eventually passed its final budget bill, which included $50 million in bonds allocated to the Kansas University School of Pharmacy.
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