2010: The Evolving Pharmacy Marketplace

The Evolving Pharmacy Marketplace:
Engagement, Automation and Outcomes
By George Van Antwerp
Vice-President, Solutions Strategy Group
Silverlink Communications
WHITE PAPER

The Evolving Pharmacy Marketplace:Engagement, Automation and Outcomes | 1Copyright © 2009 Silverlink Communications, Inc.
Executive Summary
In the next several years, we believe that three changes will drive the pharmacy mar-
ketplace and ultimately change the business model for PBMs. These changes will be
accelerated by the current financial crisis which may drive further consolidation in the
short-term. Consolidation which we believe will accelerate the “race to the bottom”
where the traditional model of scale has been maxed out with parity achieved among the
large PBMs.
1. The need to better engage the consumer in understanding their benefits and ultimately
responsibility for their care;
2. The effort to automate and integrate data across a fragmented system and across siloed
organizations; and
3. The shift from trend management to being responsible for outcomes.
The Crisis
The rising cost of healthcare is astounding. In 2008, national health expenditures increased by 6.9% — two times the rate of inflation
totaling $2.4 trillion or $7,900 per person. Healthcare spending represented 17% of the gross domestic product (GDP). Spending is
expected to increase at similar levels for the next decade reaching $4.3 trillion by 2017 — 20% of the GDP. Employer health insur-
ance premiums increased by 5% – again two times the rate of inflation — costing employers $12,700 to insure a family of four and
$4,700 for an individual.1
Workers are now paying $1,600 more in premiums annually for family coverage than they did in 1999. Since then, employment-based
health insurance premiums have increased 120%, compared to cumulative inflation of 44% and wage growth of 29%. Average out-
of-pocket costs for deductibles, co-payments for medications and co-insurance for physician and hospital visits rose 115% during
the same period — and the percentage of Americans whose out-of-pocket spending for healthcare including health insurance that
exceeds $2,000 a year, rose to 43%.2
1
National Coalition on Healthcare, Healthcare Insurance Costs, March 17, 2009. www.nchc.org/facts.
2
National Coalition on Healthcare, Healthcare Insurance Costs, March 17, 2009. www.nchc.org/facts.
Table of Contents
Executive Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
The Crisis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Consumer Engagement. . . . . . . . . . 2
Consumerism in Healthcare. . . . . . . 3
Ubiquity and the Changing
Paradigm. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Effective Communications:
The Key to Patient Involvement. . . . . 5
Resources: Back To The Future. . . . 6
Cross-Channel View of the Patient. . . 7
Evolving Predictive Models. . . . . . . . 8
E-prescribing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Evolving Business Models . . . . . . . . 9
Plan Design Loses Luster. . . . . . . . 10
Theranostics (or Personalized
Medicine). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Silverlink’s Pharmacy Solutions. . . . 12
About Silverlink. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
The Evolving Pharmacy Marketplace:
Engagement, Automation and Outcomes
By George Van Antwerp
Vice-President, Solutions Strategy Group
Silverlink Communications
Healthcare Spending is Projected tp Represent 20% of GDP by 2017
$0
$500
$1,000
$1,500
$2,000
$2,500
$3,000
$3,500
$4,000
$4,500
9.5%
2003 2006
NationalHealthcareExpenitures($bn)
DrugSpendasa%ofNHE
2009 2012 2015
10.5%
11.5%
12.5%
Source: Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)
e e e

“PBMs are not currently
organized or rewarded to
maximize value. They are
judged largely on their ability
to reduce costs and have
little incentive to enhance
appropriate prescribing and
adherence.”3
3
William H. Shrank, MD, MSHS; Michael E. Por-
ter, PhD, MBA; Sachin H. Jain, MD, MBA; and
Niteesh K. Choudhry, MD, PhD, A Blueprint for
Pharmacy Benefit Managers to Increase Value,
Am J Manag Care. 2009;15(2):87-93
Consumer Engagement
The industry-wide movement to consumerism will continue to affect plan design, but it will
also thrust PBMs and pharmacies into the critical path of member engagement. With phar-
macy being the most used benefit as well as the volume and accessibility of retail pharma-
cies, they will play a critical role in driving adherence and helping consumers understand
healthcare. This will renew the focus on cognitive skills, medication therapy management
and ultimately drive the desire for a more traditional “corner store” approach that can be
scaled using technology.
Combining this with the macro-economic forces that are driving ubiquity of technology
through mobile media and the evolution of the Internet from a pull media to a push media will
also challenge the PBMs and pharmacies to innovate. They will be required to look outside
of healthcare models to identify the right communications to drive behavior. PBMs and phar-
macies will have to leverage behavioral economics and personalization technology to get the
right message to the right consumer at the right time through the right medium.
Automation and Integration
The consumer engagement challenges will only exasperate some ongoing challenges within
the PBM and pharmacy community. This will include the lack of staff to provide more cogni-
tive services and the general fragmentation of data across organizations and functional silos.
Figuring out an overall “single view of the patient” which shows all the touch points and offers
a coordinated multi-channel strategy for inbound and outbound communications will become
a major focus.
In addition, in order to make these solutions efficient, the development of predictive models,
much like the clinical and underwriting solutions being used today, will become the norm
across the industry. As these models are fine tuned and the promise of e-prescribing be-
comes more of a reality, the channel for engaging physicians in the member’s care will finally
exist. PBMs and pharmacies will be able to use data to allow physicians to understand when
patients aren’t being compliant and when there is an opportunity to drive change.
From Trend Management to Outcomes
The traditional business model for the PBMs has been based on large scale negotiations to
drive rebates and efficiencies within mail service – cost to fill and acquisition costs. At the
same time as those efficiencies reach a maximum discount, the traditional tools for managing
trend will have run their course. Although plan design won’t “die”, comparative effectiveness
may reduce (or eliminate) the need for formularies, and in general, the ability to shift cost to
the consumer above the 25-30% level will be difficult.
Both of these challenges will push the PBMs and pharmacies into a role where they are
focused on driving health outcomes and being part of the bigger solution across the indus-
try. They have a strong footprint to drive this change and as theranostics (or personalized
medicine) evolves there will be an opportunity to find cost effective solutions to change the
prescription landscape.

• Healthcare enterprises must
prepare for greater patient in-
volvement in health decisions.
• New benefit plans and prod-
ucts are designed to increase
the cost share with the patient
and reduce plan and em-
ployer costs.
• Consumer-directed plans in-
tend to place more emphasis
on wellness care and preven-
tion than traditional plans but
have been viewed as simply
cost-shifting tools.
• CDHPs have helped consum-
ers become more conscious
of healthcare costs, but
without data transparency
and tools, their impact will be
limited.
Consumer Preferences
in Healthcare
• 34% would use a retail clinic;
16% already have.
• 60% want physicians to
provide online access to medi-
cal records, test results and
appointment scheduling.
• 1 in 3 consumers want more
holistic or alternative thera-
pies.
• 3 in 4 consumers want ex-
panded use of in-home moni-
toring devices and online tools
that would reduce the need
for visits and allow them to be
more active in their care.
• 66% strongly favor state-man-
dated health insurance.
• 84% prefer generics to name-
brand drugs.
• 29% support a tax increase to
help cover the uninsured; 37%
would consider a tax hike.
• 52% understand their insur-
ance coverage.
• 1 in 4 consumers maintain a
personal health record.
(Source: Deloitte, Many U.S. Consumers Want
Major Changes in Healthcare Design and Deliv-
ery, March 17, 2009. www.deloitte.com)
4
Aetna, Consumerism in Healthcare, March
2009. www.aetna.com
5
Barres, Ann, The State of Consumerism in
Healthcare: SWOT Analysis Courtesy of EBRI,
Workforce Management, March 2009. www.
compforce.typepad.com/compensation_force
Consumerism in Healthcare
The healthcare system is in the midst of a transformation from event-centric (i.e., claim or
visit) to consumer-centric. This new focus is about engaging and enabling consumers in their
healthcare decision-making process. The traditional one-way conversation is giving way to
dialogue as healthcare enterprises make the transition (willingly or unwillingly) to involve pa-
tients in healthcare decisions. Healthcare enterprises must prepare to address the challenges
and opportunities that consumerism presents and the system must find a way to reward
them for these cognitive services.
As individuals pay a greater share of the costs associated with healthcare, they demand
greater control over decisions and services affecting their health. This trend includes services
aided by Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs)
— savings vehicles generally paired with High-Deductible Health Plans (HDHPs).
Consumer-Directed Health Plans (CDHPs) typically consist of three components: a health
savings account; a high-deductible plan that includes preventive care not charged against
the deductible; and access to information and tools that help consumers make better health-
care decisions. Monthly premiums are lower in these plans and, once the deductible is met,
CDHPs pay benefits like traditional health plans.
As shown in the recent survey conducted by Medco Health Solutions below, payors are at a
point where the economic realities are forcing them to take a more aggressive stance on cost
management. It will no longer be a question of how rich are the healthcare benefits at one
employer compared to another, but does the employer offer any coverage at all.
(Chart Source: Presentation at PCMA on March 25, 2009 by Joe Marabito, VP and GM of CDH at Medco Health Solutions, Inc. titled
“Impact of the Economy on Pharmacy Benefits and Use”)
These new consumer-directed products have four critical attributes:
• Provide access to information and more control over the member’s own healthcare allow-
ing them to make informed decisions about treatment and provider options;
• Increase consumer involvement and awareness about the real cost of healthcare which
research has shown reduces total healthcare spending;
• Offer lower monthly premiums making healthcare benefits more affordable for employers
and employees; and
• Encourage healthy behavior with no out-of-pocket costs for routine physicals, child immu-
nizations or weight-loss programs — placing the focus on wellness care and prevention4
.
The financial incentives embedded in these plans seem to be working. Participants in CDHPs
and HDHPs report being more cost conscious about healthcare than participants in tradi-
tional plans. Almost 75% of CDHP participants and 60% of HDHP participants say that the
health plan has made them think more about the cost when deciding whether to see a doc-
tor or to fill a prescription compared with 47% of traditional plan participants5
.
This creates a wedge for PBMs and pharmacies to become a go-to resource for helping
consumers make decisions about their healthcare dollars. On top of general consumer
branding awareness, the challenge they have to address is how to push information out to
consumers in a timely fashion rather than simply providing reactive tools like portals. It will be
important to drive price transparency so that members can make decisions about costs and
to find ways to do this without reducing satisfaction or negatively impacting health outcomes
due to members being less adherent.
Which one of the statements best
reflects your organization’s
benefit philosophy regarding
prescription benefit coverage?
Provide Broadest
Coverage
Balance Cost with Care Limit Coverage
52%
13%
46%
81%
2%
7%
5 Years Ago
Today

• Patients are increasingly more
informed about healthcare
issues due to the availability
of information online.
• Social media is growing in im-
portance as patients dialogue
online to support others with
similar health issues.
• E-patients expect to par-
ticipate fully in a cooperative
relationship with healthcare
providers to ensure they are
receiving appropriate care.
• Healthcare providers must be
ready to educate questioning
e-patients.
• Smart devices and mobile
applications will continue to
dominate the communications
space for certain generations.
...[When patients] participate
more actively in the process
of medical care, we can cre-
ate a new healthcare system
with higher quality services,
better outcomes, lower
costs, fewer medical mis-
takes, and happier, healthier
patients. We must make this
the new gold standard of
healthcare quality and the
ultimate goal of our improve-
ment efforts:
• Not better hospitals
• Not better physician practices
• Not more sophisticated elec-
tronic medical systems.
• Happier, healthier patients.
— CHARLES SAFRAN
Source: e-patients: how they can help us heal
health care, Tom Ferguson, MD, pg. 5 - http://e-
patients.net/e-Patients_White_Paper.pdf
6
David Ranii, More Companies Use Social Media
for Marketing, The News & Observer, December
12, 2008. www.newsobserver.com
7
David Ranii, More Companies Use Social Media
for Marketing, The News & Observer, December
12, 2008. www.newsobserver.com
8
Pr-inside, MedTouch CEO to Discuss Impact of
Social Media in Healthcare Marketing, June 4,
2008. www.pr-inside.com/print624567.htm
Ubiquity and the Changing Paradigm
The Internet has become a huge resource of healthcare information with the advent of
comprehensive third-party sites like WebMD, Medispan and Family Doctor along with a large
number of Health2.0 companies that are developing innovative tools for consumers. In ad-
dition, healthcare providers have developed extensive online libraries for their participating
members and physicians to research and reference to gain a better understanding of health
conditions and prescribed therapies. Today, an astounding 95 million Americans and 95% of
physicians use the Internet for health research6
.
Electronic social media — blogs, chat rooms, networking sites — also plays an important
role in educating patients by facilitating dialogue among people who have experienced the
same medical conditions. According to Forrester Research, the number of social media
“spectators” — people who read or watch social media — has increased from 48% in 2007
to 69% of people who venture online today.7
Through these vehicles, patients learn first-hand
what works and doesn’t work in the treatment of their specific medical conditions from a
global network of patients (aka e-patients). These patients are willing and anxious to share
and support others in dealing with their healthcare issues, and their testimonials are a power-
ful influence on patient biases toward their treatments.
The Internet has placed vast amounts of medical information at the patients’ fingertips.
As technology becomes more ubiquitous with tools like the iPhone, patients have unprec-
edented access to information, opinions, experiences, testimonials and case-studies that are
prompting a new wave of patients who are knowledgeable and informed. They understand
their disease or condition, medications available to cure or control them, diagnostic testing,
surgical procedures and treatments — and treat their physicians more as an advisor in the
process not the expert. These patients are questioning their physicians and healthcare pro-
viders to not only understand the therapies prescribed but participate in the decisions made
on their behalf. In the next few years, the vast majority of patients will be e-patients armed
with an arsenal of information about their health issues and will require participation in the
decisions made regarding their care.
Additionally, these new online tools have evolved from a pull medium to a push medium.
Traditional member portals provided great information to the engaged consumer who sought
it out, but they didn’t reach out and pull in the at-risk consumers. With social media and
mobile technology, consumers are engaged by these tools in new ways that may eventu-
ally activate more of these consumers and push them to take a role in improving their health
outcomes.
“Healthcare providers are aware the impact of traditional media outlets are shrink-
ing,” said Paul Griffiths, CEO, MedTouch. “But the great opportunity social media
affords is vastly superior to anything we’ve seen before. Healthcare consumers are
self-organizing in a way that was impossible a few years ago and the [healthcare
providers] who engage first will reap rewards disproportionate for their investment.”8
E-patients, a new breed of informed patient seeking knowledge about their healthcare situa-
tions on the Internet, are demonstrating the power of participatory healthcare. E-patients are:
• Equipped with the skills to manage their own condition;
• Enabled to make choices about self-care and those choices are respected;
• Empowered to share in decisions in their care;
• Engaged in understanding their health situations and treatments;
• Emancipated from accepting decisions made for them without their input; and
• Expert in improving their health status, cope better with fatigue, role limitations, reduced
disability and their dependence on hospital care.
Source - David Ranii, More Companies Use Social Media for Marketing, The News & Observer, December 12, 2008. www.newsobserver.com

• Individuals need to be
motivated to care about
healthcare costs and to adopt
healthy lifestyles.
• Individuals don’t understand
their plan designs and don’t
have information about
formularies, copays or prior
authorizations available to
them when they are with their
providers or at the Point of
Sale (POS).
• Physicians don’t have the
time to provide cognitive ser-
vices to fully educate patients
about their medications or
their condition.
• Member turnover from plans
limits the return-on-invest-
ment (ROI) that payors can
realize in preventative care.
• No one is responsible for
outcomes.
“Persistent challenges call
for new strategies. Ameri-
can industry knows that the
benefits of quality healthcare
and effective cost manage-
ment have not been fully real-
ized. This will only happen
when employees and their
dependents are activated to
participate willingly in making
wiser healthcare and person-
al lifestyle choices. Human
Resources executives are
hungry for evidence-based
insights that reflect the most
advanced understanding of
the healthcare marketplace
and the science of human
behavior.”
HELEN DARLING
President, National Business
Group on Health
Board Member, The Center for
Cost-Effective Consumerism9
9
Quote from the Express Scripts Consumerol-
ogy website, accessed on April 1, 2009, http://
www.consumerology.org/consumerology.html
Effective Communications: The Key to Patient Involvement
In order to ensure that patients receive quality healthcare from their providers, both patients
and the organizations which govern the healthcare industry are demanding timely, meaning-
ful and easy-to-understand communications throughout the entire healthcare continuum.
Unfortunately, a synthesized approach is still out of reach given the fragmented healthcare
system of today. Coordination among the different entities is often difficult since each of
them have functional silos with their own objectives, processes and databases.
Effective communication begins from the first contact and continues throughout the member
lifecycle. These communications need to cut through the information clutter that overwhelms
consumers and most importantly, provide them with a call to action. Many of the techniques
to accomplish this have been deployed in other industries (e.g., financial services) where
segmentation, channel preference and predictive algorithms have been used for years.
These sciences are just being introduced in the healthcare industry and need to evolve to
meet the dynamic nature of health consumers. Members’ interest changes as they move
through different stages from being newly diagnosed with a chronic disease to being an ac-
tive patient. But, the other challenge is integrating data across the care team and building a
service culture where motivational interviewing and other techniques are deployed in every
mode of communication to engage the member.
For example, we know that customized and relevant communications are essential to patient
adherence and loyalty, but look at how many companies still have a one-size-fits-all ap-
proach. Effective communications must instill confidence and obtain buy-in from patients
to form a cooperative effort to improve their health outcomes. Express Scripts has been
the most vocal PBM in this space with The Center for Cost Effective Consumerism (www.
consumerology.org).
This integrated inter-company and intra-company solution is still futuristic in most cases, but
companies are beginning to address one issue at a time to improve the ROI on their member
interactions.
• How do I interact with them?
• How do they want to be interacted with?
• When do I have to override their preferences to make sure they get a message
(e.g., drug recall)?
• How have they responded and acted previously?
• How do I predict they will act in the future?
• What data-driven triggers can I use to launch a communications campaign?
• What messaging will get them to take action?
With workflow and campaign management technology, companies will achieve this
“segment-of-one” over the next five years. With that evolution, communications will begin
with plan selection and continue through the member’s plan lifetime. They will continue to
increase in relevancy and personalization specific to individual healthcare needs, stages of
awareness and concerns. This will greatly reduce patient confusion and increase buy-in for a
cooperative wellness and healthcare effort.

• The aging baby boomer
population uses a large share
of total prescription drugs —
significantly taxing pharmacy
resources.
• Medication Therapy Manage-
ment (MTM) type services for
the commercial population
continue to be needed to pro-
vide a front-line care manage-
ment system.
• Workflow automation and
improvements in pharmacy
technician skills will free up
resources for pharmacists to
spend more time counseling
patients.
10
Sharon K. Gershon, R.Ph., James M. Cultice,
B.S., Katherine Knapp, Ph.D., How Many
Pharmacists Are in Our Future?, The Bureau of
Health Professionals, June 5, 2000. www.hhs.
gov/pharmacy
11
Medco’s Specialized Pharmacists, Safety Pro-
grams Gain Therapy Management Accreditation,
Medco press release from 1/10/08, accessed
4/9/09 at http://medco.mediaroom.com/index.
php?s=43&item=295
12
Christopher, Abby, The Future of Pharmacy,
Pharmacy Times, September 2007. www.
pharmacytimes.com
Resouces: Back To The Future
While the pharmacy industry is poised to and wants to take a greater role in patient manage-
ment, the greatest limitation facing the industry today is the shortage of pharmacy profes-
sionals. There are several factors which have converged to cause this shortage:
• Rapid growth in prescription volume;
• Increase in new medications with greater complexities;
• New administrative requirements for handling third-party payments consuming 10% to
20% of the pharmacist’s time;
• Expanding population of 65 years or older which uses a disproportionately high share of
prescription drugs;
• Medication therapies are increasing in size, complexity and volume; and
• Decline of the number of applications to pharmacy schools in the late 1990s, leading to
reduced class sizes and today’s shortage.
According to the Bureau of Health Professions, the number of graduates entering the phar-
macy profession by 2015 will exceed population growth by 1%, supplying 76 pharmacists to
every 100,000 people10
. This is a good initial step, but it does not take into account:
• The unprecedented growth of the aging population in the next decade;
• The fact that the median age of accredited pharmacy professionals is 46; and
• That it will take years to backfill the current shortage before the industry can catch up.
Going forward, the pharmacists of the future will be more like the corner pharmacist of the
past who played a significant role in direct patient care. Pharmacists will become an integral
part of the healthcare team through collaboration with physicians to improve medication
safety and health outcomes while helping to reduce the overall cost of healthcare.
While there are several smaller pharmacies that provide this level of service, one of the most
scalable models can be found in the Therapeutic Resource Centers (TRCs) that Medco
Health Solutions has developed. These TRCs offer members direct access to specialized
pharmacists that are trained in complex and chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascu-
lar disease and gastro-intestinal disorders11
.
The evolution of this model into a scalable, technology-enabled solution, which is deployed
universally across the industry, will begin to happen over the next decade. This increased
burden on the pharmacist will also accelerate the need for technology automation at the
Point-of-Sale (POS) and push for a more educated and experienced base of pharmacy tech-
nicians. At a minimum, this will manifest itself in accreditation of pharmacy technicians with
ongoing continuing education (CE) requirements.
“We employ over 40,000 pharmacy technicians,” said Papatya Tankut, Vice Presi-
dent of Pharmacy Professional Services, CVS Corp. “I believe that the correct utiliza-
tion and training for technicians provides and affords the pharmacist the opportunity
to be able to do the things only they are trained to do and spend more time counsel-
ing and interacting with the patients.”12
Medication Therapy Reviews (MTRs)
MTR is a clinical evaluation of a patient’s medication therapy by the pharmacist in person at the point of purchase. As
mail order pharmacy utilization grows and the shortage of pharmacists continues, the MTR may expand to utilize other
communications channels.
MTRs establish and enhance the pharmacist- patient relationship allowing the pharmacist to observe visual cues that
indicate adverse reactions to medications. This can result in early detection of medication-related problems thus reduc-
ing emergency room visits and medication misadventures. (J. Am, Core Components of Community Pharmacy MTM,
American Pharmacy Association, 2005. www.medscape.com)
In a comprehensive MTR, the patient presents all current medications to the pharmacist, prescription and OTC, herbal
products and dietary supplements. The pharmacist then assesses the medication therapy for appropriateness and works
with both patient and prescriber providing education and information to improve the patient’s self-management of their
medications.
Targeted MTRs are used to address new medication problems or for ongoing monitoring during follow-up visits. The
pharmacist assesses the specific therapy problem, intervenes, and provides education and information to both the
patient and prescriber as appropriate.
The MTR is tailored to the individual needs of the patient at each visit. For optimal health outcomes, a patient would
receive an annual comprehensive MTR and targeted MTRs throughout the year to address new medication problems or
ongoing medication therapy issues.

• Patient communications to-
day are fraught with confusion
and conflicting messages.
• Sequencing of messaging
(e.g., call then letter followed
by e-mail) can drive dramatic
improvements in program
results.
• Organizational and technol-
ogy-related barriers must be
overcome to achieve a cross-
channel view.
• Data is typically captured at a
campaign level in marketing
or at a call level in opera-
tions. A member-centric view
across events (i.e., claims)
doesn’t exist.
Table source - Kreuter, M. W., Farrell, D., Olev-
itch, L., Brennan, L., Tailoring Health Messages:
Customizing Communication Using Computer
Technology, Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ.
2000
13
Todd Greenwood, Ph.D., M.PH, Michele
Demak Epstein, M.PH, Joan Sinopoli, M.A. Lynn
Benzing, M.J, Individualization vs. Segmentation
in Prescription Therapy Adherence Programs,
Patient Marketing Group, Inc, 2006. www.
patientmarketing.com/media/pdf/individualiza-
tion.pdf
14
Kreuter, M. W., Farrell, D., Olevitch, L., Bren-
nan, L., Tailoring Health Messages: Customizing
Communication Using Computer Technology,
Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ. 2000
Cross-Channel View of the Patient
Driving patients to change behavior requires a new strategy. People are too overwhelmed
today. And, confusion has become a major problem as competing entities send the same
patient conflicting messages. Not only do healthcare professionals often disagree on appro-
priate therapies for the same condition, but a patient is often treated for multiple conditions
by different physicians who do not communicate with each other. To add to the confusion,
outside entities such as pharmaceuticals manufacturers are aggressively advertising their
medications directly to the consumer.
“Taking an individualized approach to patient communications is more likely to
produce desired outcomes — motivating patients to engage in a complex set of
behaviors over a period of time. Driving appropriate medication use requires an un-
derstanding of patients’ individual barriers to compliance and persistency. This need
for discrete messaging is even more pronounced for chronic conditions that call
for significant lifestyle changes and have complex, long-term treatment regimens.
The need to provide dynamic and appropriate support to patients in order to yield
increased adherence compels the use of an individualized approach to communica-
tion that is sensitive to the needs of patients.”13
Leading healthcare researchers have already begun to leverage new technologies to create
individually-tailored messaging that drive behavioral changes and address adherence issues
in a wide variety of therapeutic regimens. Kreuter & Skinner define tailoring as “any combi-
nation of information or change strategy intended to reach one specific person based on
characteristics that are unique to that person and related to the outcome of interest that has
been derived from an individual assessment.”14
The main concept is that tailoring creates
communications specific to the individual rather than for a group of people.
Ten most important aspects of patient healthcare communications:
• Responsiveness • Understandability • Personalization • Overall tone
• Relevance • Credibility • Follow-through
• Helpfulness • Privacy • Convenience
To optimize individualized communication, a comprehensive view of each patient’s healthcare
history is required. Healthcare providers need to have the capability to access and review the
patient’s health profile aggregated over a lifetime including health issues, tests, diagnoses, sur-
geries, medication therapies and outcomes in one place. They also need to understand how
the patient uses the Internet, how they use the call center for support, how they interact with
the disease management company and all the other relevant information that creates a demo-
graphic and psychographic profile of the individual. The information within the profile can then
be utilized to generate large-scale, customized patient communications appropriate for their
unique health situations and incorporating their specific preferences and predicted responses.
The other untapped potential in channel coordination is in sequencing of messaging. A
single communication is unlikely to capture all the likely responses. Additionally, without
knowing how someone learns, you don’t know if a letter, a call or an online tool is most ef-
fective in compelling them to act. As companies begin to segment their members, they will
have a framework with different communications campaigns or strategies. The likely axis of
the cube would include:
• Likelihood to take action • Value of the target • Segment
For example, a person who is at high risk for development of co-morbidities; is unlikely to be
adherent; and who is in the “Sick but Invincible” segment would receive a very different set of
communications when they forgot to refill than the person who is low risk; likely to be adher-
ent; and in the “Diligent Family Provider” segment.
Based on what we have observed across over 50,000 different healthcare communications
programs, we have found six levers that consistently can be applied to improve outcomes:
1. Channel selection;
2. Messaging;
3. Timing and frequency;
4. Branding;
5. Packaging; and
6. Incentives.

• Predictive modeling helps
healthcare providers:
- Identify high-risk patients.
- Identify gaps-in-care.
- Underwrite new business.
• New models will begin to
predict responses to interven-
tions.
15
Carlson, Bob, Predictive Modeling: Sharp
Lens on Near Future, Managed Care Magazine,
March 2007. www.managedcaremag.com
16
Dunham, Will, E-Prescribing to Soar with
Increased Spending, Reuters, March 16, 2009
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/
idUSTRE52F4VD20090316
Evolving Predictive Models
Health insurers have long been utilizing predictive modeling tools as part of their underwriting
arsenal to help set premiums for employer groups. Over the years, predictive modeling has
been gaining credibility as a tool to aid health plans, physicians and disease / case managers
in identifying high-risk members to control costs and disease progression. These models are
then used to identify data triggers (i.e., gaps-in-care) which initiate an intervention.
Proponents of predictive modeling see it as the step beyond disease management; they
detect health issues that are otherwise not visible. The models help people make decisions
that maximize better outcomes.
“The goal of a clinical strategy is to find the right intervention for the right person
at the right time, says Carol McCall, Vice President of Humana’s Center for Health
Metrics, “and ultimately, we want to understand enough about the person to be able
to custom-tailor the exact intervention that is best for them.”15
Over the next few years, predictive modeling will evolve into new areas such as healthcare
communications. As PBMs become more consumer-centric, they will embrace their rich
data to develop models that answer the following:
• Which members are most likely to be adherent?
• What members are most likely to convert to a generic? To mail?
• What members are most likely to stay at mail once I get them there (i.e., not churn)?
• Which channel is the member most likely to respond to – letter, call, e-mail, text message?
• Which message is most likely to get the member to act?
These models can then be used to drive highly relevant, customized communications and in-
terventions regarding medication therapies, purchasing options, utilization, specific condition
and disease information, preventative therapies and much more.
E-prescribing
With Medco Health Solutions now claiming that more than 10% of their claims are coming
through e-prescribing, we may have achieved a tipping point. While the technology has
existed for several years, adoption has been very slow. Now, with the economic stimulus bill
signed by President Obama in February 2009, there is renewed hope that e-prescribing will
have the funding and support to finally be adopted.
Ultimately e-prescribing (in some form) will replace paper prescriptions, and that may be ac-
complished within the next decade. In the United States, the prediction is that 75% of physi-
cians will be writing electronic prescriptions within five years and 90% by 201816
. One of the
key questions still to be decided is whether the technology simply replaces the prescription
pad or whether clinical edits and cost savings messaging can be driven down to the physi-
cian through this technology.
With the merger of RxHub and SureScripts, there is a centralized hub that has the backing of
the PBM industry and the retail pharmacy industry. That means that 75% of retail pharma-
cies can now handle electronic prescriptions, and as physician adoption grows, there will be
a channel for communication between the three entities – physician, pharmacist and PBM.
The question is how to leverage this technology to improve patient outcomes and reduce
their out-of-pocket spending. This adoption creates a new platform that the PBMs and phar-
macies can leverage to build their relationships with consumers and will also be an outlet for
driving behavior change.

• Prescription growth has
slowed dramatically in 200817
.
• Numerous surveys have
shown people skipping
doses, not filling medications,
splitting pills and ultimately
being less adherent due to
the current recession18
.
• Since 1999, employment-
based health insurance pre-
miums have increased 120%,
compared to cumulative infla-
tion of 44% and cumulative
wage growth of 29% during
the same period19
.
• PBMs are moving to trans-
parent pricing models.
• PBMs must use every means
available to accelerate patient
conversion to generic drugs,
when clinically appropriate.
• Competition in the retail
pharmacy sector is fierce,
resulting in unprecedented
programs offering free and
very low cost medications.
17
Pierson, Ransdell, U.S. Drug Sales Show
Anemic Growth in ’08, http://www.reuters.com/
article/healthNews/idUSTRE52I5G320090319
18
Consequences of Health Care Costs, Kaiser
Family Foundation, Kaiser Health Tracking Poll,
March 17, 2009, http://slides.kff.org/chart.
aspx?ch=840
19
The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
Employee Health Benefits: 2008 Annual Survey.
September 2008.
20
Bajaj, Vikas, Household Wealth Falls By Tril-
lions, The New York Times, March 12, 2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/business/
economy/13wealth.html?_r=1
21
The National Coalition on Health Care, The
Impact of Rising Health Care Costs on the
Economy, March 17, 2009, www.nchc.org,
22
Martin Sipkoff, PBMs Raise the Curtain, Man-
aged Care Magazine, September 2006. www.
managedcaremag.com
Evolving Business Model
With high unemployment and more than $11 trillion in wealth having been destroyed20
, an-
nual healthcare spending increases have come under even more scrutiny. The annual year-
over-year increases have driven costs to the point where the ability of employers to continue
health coverage for employees and retirees is being jeopardized. Employers, on average,
have seen their health insurance premiums increase nearly 120% since 199921
. Combine
these cost increases with the consumer crisis and you have the perfect storm.
Although prescription drugs only represent about 10% of total healthcare costs, these cost
pressures have focused themselves on the pharmaceutical industry for several reasons:
• It is more easily understood than other areas of healthcare.
• It has traditionally been very visible in their marketing activities and shown high profit
margins.
• There is a large amount of competition between drugs, pharmacies and PBMs.
That focus has forced PBMs into incorporating several changes into their business model
and thus created new competitors. A more transparent contract model has emerged as a
result of the work of the Pharmaceutical Purchasing Coalition, a group of 56 large employers,
led by the HR Policy Association, a policy group representing about 250 employers that col-
lectively spent over $5 billion on their pharmaceutical benefits. Through this program, PBMs
participating in transparency programs will disclose to their clients the actual acquisition
costs for retail and mail-order drugs. The PBMs will also pass drug company rebates directly
to their clients, and they will agree to be audited by the employers22
.
Although this contract structure does provide more information, the ultimate role of the PBM
has remained the same:
• Drive down costs through economies of scale (rebates, acquisition costs, retail contracting);
• Implement plan design solutions and adjudicate claims;
• Provide formulary management services;
• Provide Drug Utilization Review (DUR) and other clinical services; and in many cases,
• Provide mail order and/or specialty pharmacy fulfillment services.
One area of pricing that will change will be the unbundling of services. As transparency
theoretically minimizes the margin which can be made in the traditional areas of the busi-
ness – mail order and generics, PBMs will have to act more like health plans do with their
self-insured clients. We can expect to see more services provided as line items within the
contract on a per member basis which will open the market up to best-of-breed providers of
niche services.
Over the next few years, PBMs will have to be increasingly innovative in how they demon-
strate value. The traditional functions of negotiating leverage through economies of scale
will no longer be a sufficient strategy to demonstrate value. This will require PBMs to play a
more active role in outcomes and become a more central player in the care team for patients.
As this occurs, several areas which will have renewed interest are:
• Adherence programs;
• Partnerships with manufacturers to drive disease awareness or specialty drug compliance;
• Integration of lab, medical and pharmacy data into predictive models;
• Some form of disease management as an area for partnership, acquisition or build out; and
• Vertical integration with managed care or retailers.
These changes will likely validate the CVS acquisition of Caremark and MinuteClinic and put
Walgreens in a critical position. But, the rest of the retail pharmacies are not going to go
without a fight. After Wal-Mart began offering some generics for $4 in 2006, numerous other
chains jumped onboard with similar programs or discount card programs. All of these pro-
grams are oriented at retaining or growing market share. Additionally, the retail chains con-
tinue to develop and push models that show them at the heart of the patient care continuum.
Consequences of Healthcare Costs
In the past 12 months, have you or
another family member living in your
household done each of the following
because of cost, or not?
Relied on home remidies or over the counter
drugs instead of going to see a doctor
Skipped dental care or checkups
35%
34%
27%
23%
21%
15%
7%
Put off or postponed getting health care you needed
Skipped a recommended medical test or treatment
Not filled a prescription for a medicine
Cut pills in half or skipped doses of medicine
Had problems getting mental health care
Did any of the above 53%

• Traditional cost management
tools will be maxed out:
- On average, members pay
nearly 27% of retail pre-
scription and 19% of mail
prescription costs today.23
- Over 80% of employers
lower costs with utilization
management tools24
.
- 93% of employers use a
mail-service pharmacy op-
tion25
.
• Although payors may be
more aggressive in the near
future, they generally like less
disruptive tools with similar
effectiveness to hard edits.
• Participants need to know
their options and generally
have a lack of understanding
of their benefits.
23
Pharmacy Benefit Management Institute,
Prescription Drug Benefit Cost and Plan Design
Online Report, 2008-09 Edition, March 3, 2009.
www.pbmi.com/2008_report
24
25
26
27
National Association of Chain Drug Stores
(NACDS), Industry Facts-at-a-Glance, http://
www.nacds.org/wmspage.cfm?parm1=507
28
CVS Caremark 2008 Trends Rx Report, pg. 15
Plan Design Loses Luster
The majority of effective trend management tools used today in the pharmacy space are
based on plan design (i.e., formulary, copays, utilization management, distribution manage-
ment). Plans increasingly deploy a broad range of utilization management (UM) tools for
numerous diseases and conditions. The most popular UM tools are step therapy, quantity
limits and prior authorization which block targeted prescriptions at the point-of-service (POS).
In addition, most employers have adopted multi-tier formularies that align with financial incen-
tives to use lower cost medications as appropriate alternatives.
Table 1. Summary of Cost Sharing for Common Plan Configurations1
Cost Sharing Structure
Percentage of Employers
Using Plan Configuration
2008 2007
Two-tier Plan Design with Dollar Co-payments 14.8% 16.8%
Two-tier Plan Design with Co-insurance 4.5% 7.9%
Three-tier Plan Design with Dollar Co-payments 60.5% 45.3%
Three-tier Plan Design with Co-insurance 17.9% 14.4%
Four-tier Plan Design with Dollar Co-payments 20.2% 11.5%
Four-tier Plan Design with Co-insurance 9.4% 4.1%
These trends of tighter management of the benefit will continue until saturation is achieved,
but may lose some focus with comparative effectiveness. A national standard might allow
payors to limit reimbursement within drug classes (i.e., implement a therapeutic Maximum
Allowable Cost (MAC)). Therefore, these solutions and changes force us to address three
topics:
1. Have we reached a maximum in terms of the cost sharing that can be pushed to individual
members?
2. Can we hold members responsible for their involvement in their care (i.e., are they adherent)?
3. How do we push information to members in a timely and easy to understand format?
The other component to be addressed is management of the distribution channel. Payors
(health plans, unions, employers, government entities) have implemented and will continue to
increase their optimization of channel selection – retail, mail order, specialty – through copay
incentives and mandatory programs. There is still significant upside here as only 12% of
employers require maintenance medications to be dispensed by a mail-service pharmacy26
,
commonly referred to as “mandatory mail” and mail order prescriptions only represent about
20% of all prescriptions dispensed27
in the United States.
Over the next few years, the distribution side of the business will continue to change with
retailers using central fill; mail facilities allowing pick up at retail pharmacies; or even an open
mail order network where you could go to any PBM’s mail order facility regardless of cover-
age and they would be forced to compete on service and price like retailers.
The other component which will complicate the distribution channel is how the PBMs partner
or integrate with clinics. A good example of an integrated solution being discussed is the
CVS Caremark Proactive Pharmacy Care Continuum28
which was announced last year and
is meant to leverage their assets in electronic prescribing, clinics, disease management, retail
pharmacy and the PBM space.
CVS Caremark Proactive Pharmacy Care Continuum
Proactive Consumer
Engagement:
HRQ, Biometric Screening,
ExtraCare® Health Card
CVS CAREMARK
Early Intervention
CVS CAREMARK
Continuous Suppoprt
Script Written
Open Access:
Bridge Supply,
Maintenance
Choice
Informed Pharmacy
Engagements:
Mail/Retail Adherence and
Face-to-Face Counceling
Proactive Physician
Engagement:
e-Prescribing
Face-to-Face Clinical Consulting
Proactive Real-Time Clinical
Interventions:
Personalized Cost Savings,
Gaps in Care Messaging
Informed Health
Engagements:
Coaching, Health Management,
CareAlerts
All PBMs
Retail SpecialtyMail Service
R
x

• Only 60% of the population
responds well and benefits
from a specific drug for treat-
ment of disease due to vari-
ances in genetic make-up29
.
• Genetic drug testing will en-
able physicians to prescribe
the right drug and dose tai-
lored to their patient’s specific
genetic code.
• Prescribing drugs using ge-
netic information will signifi-
cantly reduce waste, improve
patient care and raise the
safety profile for new medica-
tions.
29
Putnam, John, Winning Stocks in the Age of
Personalized Medicine, New Wave Research,
March 4, 2009. http://seekingalpha.com/
article/123963-winning-stocks-in-the-age-of-
personalized-medicine
30
Putnam, John, Winning Stocks in the Age of
Personalized Medicine, New Wave Research,
March 4, 2009. http://seekingalpha.com/
article/123963-winning-stocks-in-the-age-of-
personalized-medicine
Theranostics (or Personalized Medicine)
Any discussion of the future would be suspect without at least discussing Personalized Medi-
cine, also known as Theranostics, which is the integration of therapeutics and diagnostics.
The great promise of personalized medicine is finally on the brink of acceptance and recogni-
tion. While Medco Health Solutions has been the most vocal PBM about the topic, several
Health2.0 companies such as 23andMe have evolved to do personalized genome mapping.
Since we know that a patient’s unique genotype may respond differently to a drug or therapy
than what is perceived as the norm, this science could fundamentally alter the prescription
landscape dramatically. Much like we have discussed personalized communications, this
information can be used to tailor a patient’s treatment by either eliminating therapies that
might not work at all or by altering the amount of drug or therapy that is administered, thus
reducing side effects. Most drugs and devices are approved using large cohorts of patients,
and it is widely known that their response to the drug or therapy varies widely.
Plavix is a good example. As the second most prescribed drug in the world (25 million
prescriptions in 2007 and $8.5 billion in revenues), Plavix is widely prescribed for patients
that have experienced heart attack, stroke or other vascular events and who are believed to
be at high risk for a recurrent event caused by a blood clot. However, approximately 30% of
patients taking Plavix do not metabolize the drug because of genetic variations thus receiving
little or no benefit30
.
Summary
The next five to ten years will present challenges and opportunities for the pharmacy and
PBM industry. Innovation within the business model and evolution of their role within the
healthcare process will allow them to address three critical forces:
1. The need to engage the healthcare consumer in new ways;
2. The need to use technology to augment human interactions and drive personalization; and
3. The need to be more responsible for outcomes not simply trend management.
Healthcare consumers will continue to be overwhelmed with competing sources of infor-
mation online and sent to them. Companies that create process-based communication
solutions that apply analytics, leverage workflow and campaign management technologies
and apply best practices such as adaptive control (aka champion / challenger) will be able to
differentiate themselves.
PBMs will have to emerge as stand alone brand names with consumer recognition. They will
also have to leverage relationships with the retail network to develop the corner store of the
future which blends cognitive skills with technology to integrate with the Internet and other
technologies which consumers look to for information.
Additionally, to be an instrumental part of the care team, pharmacies and PBMs will have to
figure out a seamless approach to working with physicians through e-prescribing and other
technologies. Only then will they be in a position to improve outcomes and shift from their
traditional role to a role where they become a healthcare provider.

Silverlink’s Pharmacy Solutions
Silverlink provides consumer communications solutions for the majority of the healthcare
industry’s PBMs. These solutions range from data management and segmentation to
multi-channel communications programs that leverage automated calls, letters, call center
agents, and faxing technology, among other communications technologies to reach, engage
and motivate the healthcare consumer. Silverlink combines real-time consumer interactions,
behavioral insights and process innovation to optimize behavior change and program results.
Communications programs include:
• Automated refill transactions
• Adherence programs
• WISMO (What Is the Status of My Order) programs
• Retail-to-mail (or specialty)
• MTM Programs
• Pill Splitting
• Brand-to-Generic (or OTC) or Therapeutic Interchange
• Utilization Management
• Formulary Notification
• Member Satisfaction Surveys
About Silverlink Communications
Silverlink knows the healthcare consumer – and we know every point of contact offers a
chance to impact their behavior.
Our solutions are trusted by 80 of the nation’s largest and most influential health plans, phar-
macy benefit managers, and population health companies to build stronger relationships with
consumers and dramatically lower costs.
Silverlink’s unique approach combines real-time consumer interactions, behavioral insights
and process innovation to unlock the value that consumers represent in healthcare’s complex
cost equation. To learn more about what makes Silverlink the leader in healthcare con-
sumer communications, please visit www.silverlink.com, email info@silverlink.com, or call
1.781.425.5700.

2010: The Evolving Pharmacy Marketplace

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