Step Therapy - Pharmacy Benefit Managers are at it again!

Among the many tools that insurance companies wield to save money is a technique called ‘step therapy’.  This is a technique that exasperates patients and physicians.  Here’s how it works. 

A patients comes to his doctor with a medical issue.  The doctor, who presumably has a decent measure of medical training, experience and judgment, decides to prescribe a medication, in an effort to ameliorate the patient’s distress.  Let us call this magic elixir Pill A.  The doctor zaps this prescription to the pharmacy at the speed of light using the ever trustworthy electronic medical record.  The satisfied patient leaves with the mistaken impression that his cure is just around the corner.

Here’s where the fun begins.  Of course, the patient may receive the typical denial as Pill A is not on the formulary.  Keep in mind that an insurance company’s denial doesn’t mean the patient can’t fill the prescription.  Insurance companies would never interfere with a physician’s medical judgment.  The patient is still free to take the prescribed drug.  The fact that it costs $2,200 per month is but a trifle.   If Pill A costs a fortune and the insurance company’s alternative Pill B is cheap, then can we really argue that insurance companies are not practicing medicine?

Physicians in Asylum Driven Mad by Step Therapy

In the above example, usually Pill A and Pill B are medically equivalent, so the cheaper drug delivers the same benefit.  Sometimes, however, the doctor’s preference is medically superior.  Either way, the process burns up hundreds of hours per year for physicians and our staffs. 

Step therapy is when Pill A is denied because the doctor has not tried different types of medication first, which are not equivalent and are often inferior.  In order to get Pill A to be covered, the doctor must demonstrate that he has tried other medications first, and that they were not effective.  So, under this genius system, a patient receives drugs that cost money and likely won’t work.  After enduring this experiment, the  insurance company may ultimately cover the medicine that should have been prescribed in the first place.  Usually such approval is for a limited time guaranteeing that the physician can look forward to a sequel in the near term.  

Imagine if a patient suffered a serious side-effect from one of the step therapy drugs that the doctor knew was a waste of time.

I’ve argued on this blog on the need to reduce overutilization and to cut costs.  A fundamental premise of this blog is that less medical care can increase medical quality.  Step therapy managed to both increase costs while it cuts quality, not an easy feat.

We need to step up and step on step therapy.