Exclusive: Profiling Manufacturers’ Limited and Exclusive Pharmacy Networks for Specialty Drugs
By Adam J. Fein, Ph.D. | Original Article
This Valentine's Day, what could be more romantic than a deep dive into the relationships between manufacturers of specialty drugs and the pharmacies they choose for their limited and exclusive specialty pharmacy networks.
Below, we rely on a unique database to provide you with some never-before-published benchmarking data on manufacturer-defined networks for 290 specialty drugs.
As you’ll see, a typical network contains only five specialty pharmacies. However, this average disguises substantial variability in network size. More than one in four specialty products have an exclusive network, while some have as many as 25 participants.
Manufacturers almost always say “be mine” to pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) affiliated partners, but they also swipe right with unaffiliated specialty pharmacies. Alas, PBM and plan strategies can still make smaller pharmacies feel lonesome.