Rite Aid May Form Even Closer Ties With Prime Therapeutics PBM

Ceremony Support could type even nearer ties with the pharmacy profit supervisor Prime Therapeutics, which has extra nationwide scale because of its possession by a few of the nation’s largest Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans.

Ceremony Support earlier this week introduced plans to shut greater than 60 shops and signed a “rebate aggregation” settlement between the pharmacy chain’s Elixir PBM and Prime Therapeutics “to drive elevated worth for all of Elixir’s PBM shoppers.” The shop closures and the association with the bigger Prime PBM is a part of an effort to enhance operations.

“We’re going after the digital, retail PBM, specialty and mail order pharmacy markets that can permit us additionally to increase past our 17-state footprint to be a nationwide supplier of pharmacy in an omnichannel means, not in a brick-and-mortar means,” Ceremony Support chief government officer Heyward Donigan informed analysts Tuesday in the course of the firm’s quarterly earnings name.

However the rebate aggregation association with Prime could also be broader and comes at a time rival PBMs are rising and gaining extra scale. “The CEO of Prime and I’ve mentioned this to additional companion in some very attention-grabbing methods, which I am unable to get into now,” Donigan informed analysts.

Although Donigan wouldn’t disclose potential methods Prime and Ceremony Support or its Elixir PBM will work collectively, such discussions come throughout a interval of latest relationships between house owners of drugstore chains and medical health insurance firms and PBMs.  

Rival PBMs of Ceremony Support’s Elixir have gotten greater and competitors is fierce to manage drug costs for his or her shoppers. PBMs are the middlemen between drug makers and sufferers in terms of buying medicine in bulk and leveraging their shopping for clout to barter higher reductions for customers and employers on pharmaceuticals.

Large insurers like Cigna personal the Categorical Scripts PBM whereas Anthem launched its personal PBM IngenioRx two years in the past and the nation’s largest well being insurer, UnitedHealth Group, owns OptumRx. CVS Well being, which owns the Caremark PBM, additionally has extra clout after it purchased the well being insurer Aetna three years in the past.

Donigan stated Ceremony Support could have alternatives with different PBMs as properly.

“I do assume while you take a look at all of the PBM relationships, they’re difficult and they’re additionally fulsome,” Donigan told analysts. “We proceed to have alternatives to companion with different PBMs. And I feel we additionally would look to have an expanded relationship with some over time.”