ATLANTA, April 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- NDCHealth Corporation ended its annual pharmaceutical industry conference, "Industry Forum 2005: An Evolving Market: The Impact of the Consumer's Changing Role," last week, after two days of insight into the advent of a personalized healthcare system and how the consumer's role is changing the healthcare delivery system.
More than 140 pharmaceutical executives attended this year's forum, which offered expert guest speakers reviewing the evolving political, technological and social factors that are shifting the health industry toward patient- centered care. Key among them is the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA), and the upcoming implementation of Medicare Part D, a significant provision of the MMA that will offer a permanent, voluntary drug benefit scheduled to take effect in January 2006.
In his address, Mark B. McClellan, M.D., Ph.D., Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) outlined the strategy behind the MMA, which is to implement a more personalized patient-centered Medicare system in order to drive cost efficiencies and improve quality.
"The bulk of Medicare costs today treat chronic illness complications," said Dr. McClellan, discussing a 40-year old system that directed the patient when to seek physician and hospital care. McClellan explained Medicare's shift to a personalized and patient-centered system is to give the individual more ownership in their healthcare, and introduce preventive therapy benefits that can pre-empt chronic care.
New preventive benefits include Medicare enrollee health screening and Medicare Part D drug benefits, the most sweeping change in Medicare since its inception.
"Prescription drugs have been proven as the most effective and most efficient treatment to reduce the chronic illnesses," McClellan continued. "Prescription drugs are an integral part of the Medicare Modernization Act."
McClellan predicted that the new patient-centered Medicare system will impact the entire healthcare industry. These impact factors include creation of regional preferred provider plans, demand for a more electronic healthcare system and unprecedented pricing transparency as 42 million senior consumers become eligible for Medicare prescription drug cards.
Another component of the implementation process McClellan reviewed was the TrOOP program, which involves tracking seniors' "true out-of-pocket" (TrOOP) expenses, such as co-payments to manage their benefit coverage. CMS plans to partner with the private sector and non-profit organizations to leverage the nation's existing pharmacy system infrastructure to facilitate that information flow.
Other guest speaker highlights include: - Dr. Kevin Davies, author of "Cracking the Genome" and Editor-In-Chief of Bio-IT World, who reviewed the emerging revolution of pharmacogenomics - a personalized medicine approach to drug therapy that attempts to identify a person's genetic determinants to apply "the right drug for the right person at the right dose." According to Dr. Davies, pharmacogenomics tools are being developed for real-world use, and promises a potential future where the development of blockbuster, "one-size-fits all" drugs will for the most part, disappear. - Kevin Barnett, senior vice president, Campbell Alliance, and leader of the management consulting firm's managed market practice, reviewed the implications for the pharmaceutical industry as the government begins transitioning 42 million Medicare Part D eligible people into the program, including 6.4 million dual eligibles that account for 42% of all Medicaid spending.
NDCHealth also unveiled at Industry Forum 2005 many of the deeper and broader market Information Management market solutions it is now offering customers having completed the successful integration of ArcLight's prescription claims data in to the Intelligent Health Repository (IHR), NDCHealth's longitudinal, multi-channel U.S. healthcare claims database. The data integration has significantly enhanced IHR's market research offerings, as well as the scope of NDCHealth's IHR-centric suite of products.
About NDCHealth Industry Forum
NDCHealth Industry Forum is recognized as a leading annual pharmaceutical industry conference. Sponsored by NDCHealth, the event hosts pharmaceutical marketing, sales, and research executives and provides them with topical and relevant marketplace information. This year Industry Forum was held at The Fairmont Scottsdale Princess Resort in Scottsdale, Ariz. Other guest speakers included Richard B. Vanderveer, Ph.D., chief executive officer, V2 GfK; Katherine Haynes Sanstad, affiliate, Institute for the Future, as well as several members of NDCHealth's executive management team.
About NDCHealth
NDCHealth is a leading information solutions company serving all sectors of healthcare. Its network solutions have long been among the nation's leading, automating the exchange of information among pharmacies, payers, hospitals and physicians. Its systems and information management solutions help improve operational efficiencies and business decision making for providers, retail pharmacy and pharmaceutical manufacturers.
Headquartered at Atlanta, Ga., NDCHealth provides information vital to the delivery of healthcare every day. For more information, visit http://www.ndchealth.com/ .
NDCHealth and NDC are trademarks of NDCHealth Corporation. All other company and product names mentioned may be trademarks of the company.
NDCHealth CorporationCONTACT: Robin Wrinn of NDCHealth, +1-404-728-2214, orrobin.wrinn@ndchealth.com
Web site: http://www.ndchealth.com/