PHARMACIST STEVE

CVS Health has revealed a tool called that enables its retail pharmacists to compare prescription prices at the counter.

Through the CVS Pharmacy Rx Savings Finder, pharmacists can review a patient’s prescription history and insurance information.

They will be able to search for lower-cost choices like generic medications or therapeutic alternatives.

Pharmacists can also see whether the consumer can save money by filling a 90-day prescription rather than a 30-day one.

“Our direct experience is that patients who are confronted with high out-of-pocket costs at the pharmacy counter are less likely to pick up their prescriptions and are less likely to be adherent to their prescribed therapy,” Kevin Hourican, CVS Pharmacy’s executive vice president of retail pharmacy, said in a news release.

He noted that the rollout of the Rx Savings Finder is starting with CVS Caremark PBM members. The Woonsocket, Rhode Island company plans to make the tool more broadly available throughout 2018.

The move by CVS comes as high drug prices continue to be a spotlighted problem in the healthcare sector. Various entities using different approaches to tackle the issue.

In 2017, Surescripts spearheaded an effort to make medication cost information available in EHRs. The collaboration involves pharmacy benefit managers CVS Health and Express Scripts as well as EHR vendors like Allscripts, Cerner, Epic and GE Healthcare. The result of the initiative is what Surescripts calls the Real-Time Prescription Benefit tool, which seeks to improve overall price transparency in the prescribing process.

Earlier this year, four health systems — Intermountain Healthcare, Ascension, SSM Health and Trinity Health — and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs unveiled plans to launch a nonprofit generic drug company. The yet-to-be-named company will involve more than 450 hospitals, with other health systems set to join the project in the future. Overall, the organizations hope their effort will lower medication costs and help ensure patients get the prescriptions they need.

Pharmacy computer system has been giving Pharmacist the option when a generic is available and typically the cost difference. In fact, many states mandate that a generic be dispensed unless the prescribers has specific  “DO NOT SUBSTITUTE” or “BRAND NAME NECESSARY”.

What CVS is claiming that they are doing is going to “THERAPEUTIC SUBSTITUTION”… that means they are going to recommend substituting two different medications in the same “category of medication/therapy”  There is NO GUARANTEE that two different medications within the same category class will act the same on any given pt. While they may both work similarly, it does not guarantee that the correct dose will be chosen… may end up requiring some titration of the dose to get the same response from the “therapeutic substitution”… how that will effect/bother the pt.. is a unknown.