Dr Ryan Haumschild: What Health Systems Can Learn From Emory Healthcare's Biosimilar Strategy

Transcript

What strategies can health care institutions like Emory Healthcare implement to improve biosimilar adoption rates?

Haumschild: There are so many strategies, and it really depends on what's going on with your individual institution. I think a few of them are doing a baseline survey. You need to recognize where your barriers are because there are so many, but every institution is different. And so do we recognize is it related to the electronic medical record? Is it related to provider understanding and uptake? What about your finance team? Do they recognize that lower expense might recognize lower revenue, but that might not necessarily be a bad thing all the time?

I think when you can work through those barriers and designate key stakeholders to make more expedited decisions, that allows for faster uptake. Also, if you can get a P&T [pharmacy and therapeutics] policy approved, where pharmacy might have the ability to interchange biosimilars based on payer or individual hospital preferences, it allows for more timely adjudication and delivery of care to the patient and doing it at a reduced cost. So, I think if you can work through those barriers, focus on the electronic medical record, your key stakeholders clinically and financially, and create some of these tools, that's going to create better uptake, faster uptake, and you're going to be more efficient with your care model.