Two Florida Hospitals Agree To Participate in Pfizer Disease-Management Plan to Reduce Medicaid Costs
Tampa General Hospital and Jackson Memorial Hospital have become the first of up to 10 Florida hospitals that will participate in a disease-management program run by Pfizer that aims to reduce Medicaid expenses, the St. Petersburg Tribune reports. The drug company agreed instead to run the program, called Florida: A Healthy State, under a deal struck with the state last June (Allison, St. Petersburg Times, 3/13). Under the deal, Pfizer drugs were included on the state's Medicaid formulary without the drug maker having to offer the state price rebates. Generally, drug companies are expected to offer states price rebates to have their medications placed on a formulary, which aims to control drug costs by limiting the medications Medicaid beneficiaries can be prescribed. Under the two-year deal, Pfizer agreed to provide disease management services to certain chronically ill Medicaid beneficiaries and promised to save the state $15 million in Medicaid costs during the first year and $18 million during the second year. Pfizer also agreed to donate drugs to up to 50,000 Medicaid beneficiaries at community health centers (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 6/22/01). If Pfizer does not save the state a combined $33 million over the next two years, it has agreed to pay the state the difference in cash.
Enrollment Process
So far, 300 patients at Tampa General Hospital have been enrolled in Pfizer's disease-management program, and 132 have begun receiving services. Pfizer funded the hiring of six care managers, a program manager, a project director and a medical director at Tampa General to assist an estimated 1,200 Medicaid beneficiaries who have diabetes, asthma or high blood pressure. The idea is that program participants will learn to "care for themselves and manage their diseases," which in the long run will "reduce expensive emergency room visits," officials said. Candace Billingsley, director of outcomes at Tampa General, said, "Case managers will be working with patients by phone -- we'll go out to their homes if that's indicated. By having case managers work with these high-risk patients, it's less likely that they will end up in a medical crisis" (St. Petersburg Times, 3/13).
