AscellaHealth’s new Hemophilia Management Program is offering a groundbreaking solution for people living with bleeding disorders. By offering patients a simple way of logging infusions and bleeds, AscellaHealth’s technology combines patient-reported utilization data and physician performance data with pharmacy dispensation data that spans assay, lot, and expiration into a single platform. This provides care teams with real-time access to infusion logs and bleed alerts, allowing for quick interventions if necessary.
The timing of this new program couldn’t be better. With the recent approval of novel agents for non-inhibitors such as Hemlibra essentially doubling the price of therapy, payers need to be prepared with effective therapy optimization, clinical programs, and medication adherence. Patients, on the other hand, lack confidence that they will receive support and education from a service looking out for them. AscellaHealth’s new program is poised to give patients that peace of mind.
The Hemophilia Management Program is supported by comprehensive data analytics technology that can capture, integrate, and provide unlimited amounts of prescription data and healthcare outcome analytics in a real-time platform. Payers can now leverage accurate insights into patient care, provider Rx value, Rx trends, specialty pharmacy performance, dose optimization, treatment paths, and other clinical intervention reports.
“Payers can now have a true therapy optimization program to treat hemophilia that contains the cost of these high-cost products—as much as $50,000 a dose—with some patients treated prophylactically for the duration of therapy at a cost of $300,000 to $2.5 million per year,” says Dea Belazi, president and CEO of AscellaHealth.
Over the past decade, factor utilization has increased substantially among hemophilia A and B patients, with patients and payers assuming most of the additional costs. In fact, hemophilia was the number one stop-loss claim item in the last three years. Without a game-changing solution like AscellaHealth’s Hemophilia Management Program, patients and payers would continue to struggle with the challenges of managing the cost of novel drugs with a high price tag and a short history of clinical use.
“Our new program answers these challenges, as evidenced by typical client cost savings which are quite compelling,” says Belazi, pointing to savings of $1.5M on the specialty spend for a third-party administrator in the first year and a reduced drug spend of $1M for 20 patients as reported by a broker. Belazi adds, “One hospital reduced its specialty spend by 30 percent in the first year.”