1. Pink Sheet

Step Therapy: As Bill Aims To Routinize Processes, Study Finds Policies Often Stricter Than Clinical Guidelines

 
• By Cathy Kelly

Chronic migraine and anti-inflammatory treatments were most often subject to step therapy, Tufts researchers found. Policies varied from payer to payer, raising concerns over the impact of shifting requirements for treating the same disease as patients move among insurers.

Lots Of Steps To Climb • Source: Alamy

Step therapy policies for specialty drugs among large commercial insurers in the US were more stringent than corresponding clinical guidelines about half of the time in a new study funded by Genentech, Inc. and conducted by researchers at the company and the Center for Evaluation of Value and Risk in Health at Tufts Medical Center.

Published in the November issue of Health Affairs, the study by Lenahan et al. looked at the step therapy policies...

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