Work by Curta Investigators Selected for 2023 PhRMA Foundation Award
An article co-authored by Sean D. Sullivan, Curta Partner and President, was one of three manuscripts selected by the PhRMA foundation that explore crucial challenges facing the CMS in implementing Medicare drug price negotiation. In this paper, an exercise mimicking the potential process that CMS may use to identify therapeutic alternatives is explored. Medicare claims data and clinical guidelines are then used to propose relevant therapeutic alternatives for the initial 10 drugs up for negotiation and then describe the challenges that CMS may face in this process.
“Decisions about what constitutes a therapeutic alternative(s) and to what extent the alternative must be clinically comparable remains uncertain. These seemingly straightforward decisions will have a major impact on the determination of the initial price offer,” the authors write. “As CMS will not publish the list of therapeutic alternatives used in the negotiation process, analysts and policymakers will have to rely on exercises like this to predict the impact of the negotiation process, evaluate its implementation, and identify opportunities for improvement.”
The three winning manuscripts are available online ahead of print in JMCP:
Medicare Drug Price Negotiation: The Complexities of Selecting Therapeutic Alternatives for Estimating Comparative Effectiveness, Inmaculada Hernandez, PharmD, PhD; Emma Cousin, Pharm; Olivier J. Wouters, PhD; Nico Gabriel, MA; Teresa Cameron, MS; Sean D. Sullivan, BScPharm, PhD
Identifying Therapeutic Alternatives in CMS Drug Negotiation: The Case of Etanercept, Helen Mooney, MPH; Matthew Martin, MA; Liam Bendicksen, BA; Aaron S. Kesselheim, MD, JD, MPH; Benjamin N. Rome, MD, MPH; Hussain S. Lalani, MD, MPH, MSc
Evidence Inventory: A Patient-Centered Methodological Framework for CMS to Assess the Clinical Benefit of Drugs to Inform Maximum Fair Price Negotiation, Nabin Poudel, PhD; Salome Ricci, PharmD, MS; Julia F. Slejko, PhD