Real-time benefit tools for drug prices

JAMA

25 October 2019 - Concerns over drug prices and medication nonadherence have led to a search for new strategies to lower health care costs and out-of-pocket spending by patients.

One potentially powerful strategy is to present physicians with the price of medications and their alternatives before or during ordering. Real-time benefit tools (RTBTs) are intended to provide this information by drawing on information from pharmacy benefit plans and displaying patient-specific price information to clinicians at the time a prescription is written. 

Adoption and use of such technologies has been limited to date but will likely increase, as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently finalised a rule that Medicare Part D plan sponsors implement 1 or more RTBTs capable of integrating with at least 1 prescriber’s electronic prescribing system or electronic health record by 1 January 2021.

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Michael Wonder

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Michael Wonder

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