In 2019, plans that participated in our SafeGuardRx® platform saw healthier outcomes for members, more savings, and the flexibility to do more with their benefit budget.
SafeGuardRx Saved Enrolled Plans $4.3 Billion in 2019
Year after year, SafeGuardRx’s value-based approach has delivered more: more personalized care, more positive health outcomes, and more health per dollar.
In 2019, plans saved a total of $4.3 billion through Express Scripts SafeGuardRx programs, while delivering better health, medication adherence, and even weight loss among members.
Lowering the Cost of Drugs
Through value-based contracts for more than 100 drugs, SafeGuardRx places constant pressure on the supply chain to exclusively deliver additional savings for participating plans. Here are a few examples:
- The Market Events ProtectionSM program protected plans from more than $41 million in price hikes on several therapies.
- Through a negotiated cost cap for one of the world’s costliest drugs, clients with a member who exceeded the cap saved an average of $250,000 with Rare Conditions Care Value®.
- Members received nearly $800,000 in direct point-of-sale savings on cholesterol-lowering PCSK9 inhibitors through the Cardiovascular Care ValueSM program.
Managing Drug Trend
SafeGuardRx combines multiple effective cost-containment strategies into a single platform to deliver more value. These strategies include rebate and utilization management savings, payments from financial guarantees and exclusive product discounts.
Because of these innovative approaches, in 2019, participating plans, covering more than 56 million Americans, saw better care and lower spending than nonparticipating plans across every therapy class covered by SafeGuardRx programs, including Rare Conditions Care Value®, which launched last year.
Most importantly, SafeGuardRx is helping to improve care and affordability for patients with the toughest medical conditions. For example:
- Our Inflammatory Conditions Care ValueSM addresses the costliest class for plans, and in 2019 delivered $254 million in plan cost savings through its unique indication-based management approach.
- Through Diabetes Care Value, in accordance with clinical guidelines, 21.6% more high-risk patients added potentially life-saving statin therapy in 2019. If all plans similarly increased statin use, 25K+ potential heart attacks could be avoided over the next 10 years.
Making Patients Healthier
Patients often struggle to take their medications as prescribed due to a wide range of factors, especially those with chronic conditions. Beyond the financial outcomes, SafeGuardRx combines specialized clinical support with condition-specific patient engagement tools in order to provide personalized care based on the clinical challenges of each unique condition and patient population. This approach improves medication adherence and drives healthier outcomes.
For example, through the Diabetes Care ValueSM program’s specialized lifestyle management tool, members tracked close to 3.5 billion steps, the equivalent of walking to and from San Francisco from Washington, D.C., 307 times. And more than 80 percent lost weight by actively taking steps to live healthier.
Better medication adherence translates into higher therapy completion rates, greater compliance with clinical guidelines and, most importantly, healthier patients:
- Our Hepatitis Cure Value® maintained a steady 96 percent cure rate.
- Members who received pulmonary remote monitoring devices through the Pulmonary Care ValueSM program experienced a 47 percent increase in days without short-acting inhaler use after 12 months.
- Members enrolled in Multiple Sclerosis Care ValueSM had an average adherence rate of 84.9 percent, proving the power of condition-specific support for a class in which 25 percent of patients discontinue medication within 90 days.
These results and innovative approaches emphasize the value the pharmacy benefit delivers to plan sponsors and the health care industry year after year. Learn more about how SafeGuardRx solutions are impacting health care and patients by downloading the Express Scripts 2019 SafeGuardRx infographic.