June 6, 2017--Workers compensation leaders say the common practice of
compounding medications for injured workers can be costly and dangerous if not
done appropriately and is not guided by regulation, according to a paper
released by CompPharma, L.L.C.
CompPharma, a consortium of workers compensation pharmacy
benefit managers, analyzed compounding for its paper “Compounds in Comp: A New
Look at Patient Safety, Efficacy and Cost” to “clear up confusion surrounding
compounding medications in workers’ compensation.
It clarifies research on the efficacy of compounds and
explores how a pricing benchmark that was never intended to be applied to
pharmaceutical grade chemicals has been manipulated to drive compounding prices
and profits,” according to the text.
In it, authors wrote they support traditional compounding,
which FDA defines as “the extemporaneous combining, mixing or altering of
ingredients by a pharmacist in response to a physician’s prescription to create
a medication tailored to the specialized needs of an individual patient.”
Yet much compounding in workers’ compensation involves
creating a compounded product, marketing it to prescribers and billing
“exorbitant prices,” according to the authors.
The paper also shows how the average wholesale price benchmark
— the universal benchmark for prescription drug reimbursement in the United
States today — has been manipulated to “drastically inflate compound prices and
outlines state legislative and regulatory controls.” It is also a practice that
can be wrought with fraud, according to the authors.
Not only is cost an issue but so is safety, according to lead
author Phil Walls, Tampa, Florida-based chief clinical officer for pharmacy
benefit manager Matrix Healthcare Services Inc., which does business as
myMatrixx.
“Exposure to high concentrations of local anesthetics found in
some compounded creams can cause seizures and irregular heartbeats, and there
have been deaths associated with their use,” he said in a statement.
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