ProxsysRx has helped hospitals recover revenue under ESP restrictions within just two months.

We've generated over $500M in 340B revenue for the hospitals we serve. Learn more about our unmatched success in overcoming drug manufacturer restrictions, and our proprietary software — that gives you a single access point for all of your 340B data.

CONTACT US
Whether you have a quick question OR you’d like to plan a system demo and a free analysis of your 340B revenue-recovery potential!

Howard Hall, CHFP
Vice President of Growth
C: 214.808.2700 | howard.hall@proxsysrx.com

Making the best of a difficult situation.

According to its website, “340B ESP allows 340B covered entities and pharmaceutical manufacturers to work collaboratively to resolve duplicate discounts.” In truth, the quote-unquote “service” is nothing less than a brazen, unlawful ploy by the drug manufacturers to evade the discounts they are legally obligated to offer eligible entities — by placing extraordinary, and unnecessary, reporting burdens on hospitals submitting claims for 340B savings.

That said, if you’re already aware of 340B ESP and the burdens it places on eligible entities, Click Here to jump straight to our section detailing how ProxsysRx minimizes those burdens, while maximizing savings and ensuring compliance, for the healthcare systems we serve.

The reporting burdens 340B ESP place on covered entities

Under the requirements set down by Drug Manufacturers, covered entities must report, twice monthly, their covered prescriptions from every TPA with whom they work through 340B ESP. Because every TPA uses a different technology interface, this further complicates matters for already overworked covered entity employees.

Extracting covered prescription data from some TPAs is literally impossible, due to the lack of available 340B pricing in the 340B wholesaler account. Moreover, the idea that covered entities will regain access to their 340B discounts is an illusion — as some manufacturers have placed 45-day time-frame restrictions from the dispensing of the prescription to replenishment, knowing the covered entities will not be able to meet this requirement.

In short, the unlawful restrictions imposed by Manufacturers through 340B ESP are a thinly-veiled pretense — making the job of submitting claims for 340B drug discounts exponentially more difficult for covered entities than the system prescribed by Congress. Bear in mind: The harder the process is, the more the manufacturers make in profits.

Making matters worse, as we reported in a blog post on the topic, TPAs working under the normal, legally-prescribed reporting requirements (outside 340B ESP) routinely misqualify 340B-eligible prescriptions. Moreover, two-plus years (and counting) after the introduction of 340B ESP, most TPAs serving 340B entities lack the reporting capabilities to adequately deal with the website’s requirements. Adding insult to injury, TPAs are charging covered entities for their additional time to deal with the site’s myriad complications and problems — which includes submission uploads routinely failing.

It gets even worse. The website claims prescription discounts will be issued to entities within 10 days of claims being made. Numerous reports indicate that, after periods as long as 2 to 3 months, only 50% of the manufacturers had restored 340B discounts. What’s more, entities are now forced to track their submissions, to determine whether or not they've been restored. For most covered entities, this involves tracking literally thousands of submissions, with thousands of different price points.

Many covered entities have found that even when their 340B discounts were regained, they were subsequently pulled-away for no known reason. All of which means that covered entities are faced with hiring several additional staff to attempt to meet manufacturers’ requirements, and then track whether the discounts were restored and honored.

Sadly, 340B covered entities, starved for the savings to which they are legally entitled — with no effective protection from the government which established the program — have been forced into taking whatever they can get from drug manufacturers.

How effective has 340B ESP been in enabling drug manufacturers to avoid their legal obligations? In the first year of its relationship with 340B ESP, Merck alone saved $2 billion. Money which would, in most cases, have been used by eligible hospitals to better serve patient populations who are uninsured and/or financially incapable of paying for their own healthcare needs.

The real reason behind 340B ESP?

At ProxsysRx, we believe that the primary driver behind the creation of the 340B ESP system is the extensive range of commercial rebates that the manufacturers themselves have voluntarily extended to PBMs — rebates which, in total, far exceed the combined discounts of the 340B program. In short, it's a situation of their own making, and they’re placing the burden for their mistakes on 340B covered entities.

How we help eligible entities deal with 340B ESP

If you choose to report claims data to 340B ESP, we’ll report on your behalf. Then we’ll track 340B price reinstatement — by manufacturer, and by contract pharmacy. We’ll also verify 340B price availability for each manufacturer, in each wholesaler account, for each of your contract pharmacies. Once verified pricing has been restored along the entire chain, we’ll work with your TPAs to ”turn-on” replenishment — and ensure they replenish appropriately.

NOTE:
Each contract pharmacy with whom covered entities have relationships has a separate 340B wholesaler account. Wholesalers have either loaded Wholesale Acquisition Cost (WAC) prices for the restricted National Drug Codes (NDCs), or they’ve removed the NDCs from their 340B account catalog in response to manufacturer restrictions. There are many points along the way where price restoration has to be verified, and subsequent actions must be taken — which, of course, we’ll also take on your behalf.

Reporting to 340B ESP

• We track per-manufacturer / per-pharmacy 340B price eligibility according to what 340B ESP says it is.
• We verify in each 340B account — by Consumer Pricing and by manufacturer — if what 340B ESP says is accurate.
• Once we’ve verified each data point, we’ll notify your TPAs of newly restored pricing — then ensure that the TPAs request new price files from wholesalers.
• Once your TPAs have 340B prices, we’ll order the 340B eligible drugs.

There are many places where communication-failure can and does occur. We’ll communicate with manufacturers, 340B ESP and wholesalers on your behalf. We’ll then fight for reinstatement of the prices to which you’re entitled under the 340B statute.

Further complicating the process, many manufacturers have implemented a 45-day “lookback window” — without specifying what that window actually is: 45 days from prescription-dispensing at your contract pharmacy, or 45 days from reporting? No one really knows, because manufacturers’ rules are utterly inconsistent.

The good news about 340B ESP, for covered entities

Despite the well-founded outrage over 340B ESP and manufacturer restrictions, ProxsysRx continues to generate significant savings and revenues for the health systems we serve. Savings and revenue which, for many of those health systems, literally means the difference between solvency and closure.

One of the health systems ProxsysRx serves employs three experienced and well-trained full-time professionals — who monitor their system’s 340B claims on a full-time basis. And yet, during the first six weeks ProxsysRx supported their efforts, we provided matching justification for, and generated $187,000 worth of, 340B savings that they’d overlooked.

Altogether, our efforts have generated tens of millions in 340B savings and revenue for the hospitals we serve.

ProxsysRx is here to help, if you have questions.

There are so many ways to optimize your 340B drug program savings and benefits, while minimizing the likelihood of noncompliance. For more information, contact Howard Hall. C: 205.588.0946 | howard.hall@proxsysrx.com

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*As managing director of Berkeley Research Group, 340B ESP CEO and founder Aaron Vandervelde has written or co-written articles about the 340B program on behalf of Pharmaceutical Research And Manufacturers Of America (PhRMA). He has also produced work for AIR 340B (a drug company-led advocacy group) and other organizations — which cite his research in various misleading and inflammatory arguments that 1) Hospitals benefit from the 340B program, but 2) Low-income and uninsured patients do not, and that 3) The program raises the cost of cancer care.