Hemophilia Management Program Aims to Standardize Treatment Practices

A new hemophilia management program was launched as part of a collaborative agreement between Magellan Rx Management and Health New England to standardize treatment practices and optimize pharmacy and medical benefits use and costs.

The goal is to provide better overall quality of care at reduced costs.

Among its principal objectives, the program aims to assist payers in assessing their patients’ bleeding history and treatment patterns; standardizing dose protocols to increase transparency in hemophilia-specific care; and encouraging personalized treatment approaches, based on patients’ specific metabolic profiles.

The hemophilia management program will be led by collaborative teams of clinical pharmacists, hemophilia treatment providers, and pharmacies. Monthly communication between stakeholders is intended to ensure that key clinical information and outcomes are shared on a regular basis.

“Variability of care and lack of transparency have been prevalent issues for the management of hemophilia members for a long time,” Andrew J. Colby, Health New England’s pharmacy director, said in a press release. “By working with Magellan, we anticipate meaningful outcomes from both a quality and a financial perspective by standardizing treatment expectations for all stakeholders. Our goal is to ensure patients with hemophilia are receiving the highest quality of care, while minimizing potential waste created through excess dispensing and inappropriate dosing.”

Treating the bleeding disorder is costly and difficult to manage. The average annual cost for hemophilia treatment can surpass $250,000 per patient. For patients who have developed inhibitors, the cost may skyrocket to $1 million.

“Variability in dosing of hemophilia products contributes to increasingly high costs in the hemophilia category. Standardized dosing protocols can significantly reduce potential over-utilization of hemophilia drugs without compromising clinical outcomes,” said Maria Lopes, chief medical officer of Magellan Rx Management. “Transparency and care coordination are also key to ensuring that hemophilia patients receive best-in-class care; therefore, it is imperative that important clinical information used to determine optimal outcomes is shared between all stakeholders, including the prescriber, payer, patient and pharmacy.”

Health New England is a nonprofit health plan with members in Massachusetts and Connecticut, serving the commercial, Medicaid, and Medicare markets. Magellan Rx Management is Magellan Health’s pharmacy benefit management division.