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Conversation: Hospital GPO uncovers diabetes, DM opportunities

Medicare & Reimbursement Advisor Weekly, December 11, 2009

Premier is a hospital GPO with about 2,000 individual hospital members and is a key customer if you are getting into the hospital segment with an account team. For insight, we chatted with Fred Pane, RPh, senior director of Premier’s contracting and pharmacy affairs.

Pane is a key contact for manufacturers and is focused on value-based design, quality-of-care initiatives, and pay-for-performance programs, with the goal of supporting members and improving the handling of patients at admission through discharge. “We need to manage them better with education, disease management [DM], the right meds, so they can be more productive throughout the continuum of care,” Pane says. Are there opportunities for contracting or DM? Yes.“We’ve done lots of great work with Merck to increase use for its branded drug for colon cancer up against generics, but there’s currently a great opportunity for pharmaceutical companies in diabetes. I’d love to do some work in this area.”According to Pane, contracting for pharmaceuticals should be tied to the achievement of optimal patient outcomes.

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