Washington, DC – The American Association of Payers, Administrators and Networks (AAPAN) recently announced that it will significantly increase its advocacy efforts in 2018 to ensure that state legislators and regulators better understand the value workers’ compensation pharmacy benefits management (PBM) entities provide.
Those advocacy efforts will be guided by the association’s Workers’ Compensation PBM Counsel. Counsel participants include Express Scripts, Mitchell International, Optum Workers’ Comp & Auto No-fault, Healthesystems and Coventry Workers’ Comp Services, among others.
“Given the opioid crisis in America, continually rising pharmaceutical prices and the wide variation in state workers’ compensation regulation, it is critical that appropriate access to reasonably priced pharmaceutical treatment is in place,” said AAPAN President and CEO Julian Roberts. “Pharmaceuticals provided through a workers’ compensation PBM are at the heart of almost every injured worker’s treatment plan.”
Workers’ compensation is largest product segment in the U.S. commercial lines insurance sector.1
AAPAN worked with other national stakeholders in 2016 and 2017 to develop Workers’ Compensation Provider Dispensing Model legislation at the National Conference of Insurance Legislators (NCOIL) to lead state policy on this issue. Provider dispensing and prescription protocols remain a focus at NCOIL.
The association will bring together its membership at the AAPAN Innovations Forum later this month to develop strategies to educate policymakers about how workers’ compensation entities can provide real- world, clinical expertise in designing a practical formulary, and to help states address opioid abuse and fraud in workers’ compensation. AAPAN’s forum will be held Jan. 28-30 in New Orleans.
Notes
1http://www.insurancejournal.com/magazines/features/2016/09/19/426317.htm#
Source: AAPAN