Zynchros

In this Issue

• Musings by Bob Pinkerton
• David Smith is on vacation, look for his article next month!
• New Inland Empire Health Plan Case Study: Creating Efficiencies & Providing Value
  
• Webcast September 25th: PDL Creation, Management & Distribution for State Medicaid Agencies
• New Service Bundles
• Webcast October 23rd: Formulary Hosting Revisited
• ZSIGs Update
• Tips and Tricks: Publishing a Formulary by Chad Anderson

Musings

by Bob Pinkerton, COO, Zynchros

To all affected by Hurricane Ike we send our sincere wishes for a speedy and safe recovery.

Probably the most abused cliché in the English language is the one about events like Hurricane Ike “putting everything in perspective.” But, for those who were in nature’s way two weeks ago the cliché is reality. Even the news footage does not convey the absolute devastation and destruction the storm wrought. Several of our customers were affected, with offices in Houston shuttered for the duration. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.

*******

Boy, nothing but doom and gloom emanating from Wall Street over the last 2-3 weeks. Given the current investment climate I’m quite confident that every insurer will be looking at cost-avoidance and hard cost reductions over the coming year. From our conversations with our customers, it is also clear that these painful financial decisions require a discipline in reviewing the true value of existing service relationships and new investments. For many, this means looking at new approaches to old problems and questioning the effectiveness of “business as usual.”

Over the last month, we’ve been researching various case-study opportunities with our existing customers and I was intrigued to see some common threads emerging from their Zynchros experience. First, the implementation of our solution delivered hard returns-on-investment in terms of labor costs. Second, most of our customers felt the system would serve as a cost-avoidance tool in terms of new hiring. Third, the organizations felt Zynchros gave them leverage, and enabled doing more with the same or less resources. And, fourth, and perhaps the hardest to quantify, was that the Zynchros deployment was seen as a mechanism to begin the process of re-engineering key pharmacy business processes. Anecdotally, one contact (not currently a customer of Zynchros) told me they experience great pain in explaining to their plan sponsors why a particular drug was reimbursed when it was never contemplated as fitting within the benefit design. The watch phrase at that company has become “Do you know what’s adjudicating?” Their existing systems and processes don’t give them visibility to this and, in my opinion, visibility is what all new processes in pharmacy should be about.

If you haven’t taken a look at our new Commercial Plan Pro formulary manager, I’d invite you to do so at your earliest opportunity. It’s a radical new way to drive formulary intent and, even if your adjudicator can’t (or won’t) take a comprehensive formulary and load it in their system, you can always send it to the adjudicator each month as an attachment to your contract showing the definitive list of drugs for which you’ll pay. If you’re serious about taking a bold and different approach to pharmacy benefits, you may be interested in our new service bundles. You can find more details later in this newsletter.

Until next month.

Bob

David is out on vacation. His article will be back next month.

David Smith
VP Product Management
david.smith@zynchros.com

New Customer Case Study: Creating Efficiencies & Providing Value; Inland Empire Health Plan Automates Medicare Part D Formulary Management

First, we want to thank our customers who have generously given their time to assist us in putting together these documents. We are eager to share them with you.

This month we are showcasing Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP) and their successful application of the Zynchros.com platform on behalf of their Part D health plan customers. You can download the case study here.

Webcast September 25th: PDL Creation, Management & Distribution for State Medicaid Agencies

Register Now!

State Medicaid programs are under pressure from all sides. Join us to find out how to proactively manage your pharmacy services in order to:

• Improve PDL compliance
• Improve Provider and Pharmacy Relations
• Increase patient knowledge and satisfaction
• Minimize costs for support services while enhancing the quality of service

Our holistic, end-to-end approach starts with the PDL and delivers integrated systems and services for the creation, management and distribution of your PDL to all internal and external constituents. We will demonstrate the Zynchros.com platform for PDL creation and publishing to a number of outlets including national prescribing networks, physician reference applications and public websites. We will also discuss the advantages of integrating the Zynchros.com platform with ACS services including pharmacy benefits management, claims processing and call center support.

Register Now!

New Service Bundles

Zynchros can assist you in your efforts to gain greater control over your pharmacy costs.  With Commercial Plan Pro™ you can create and distribute definitive commercial formularies that will help you to drive greater transparency into the adjudication process.  You can streamline internal processes with automated and custom reporting.

And now we are offering bundled pricing for additional Zynchros services when you subscribe to Commercial Plan Pro.  Between now and October 31st, 2008, new Commercial Plan Pro customers can receive up to 40% off the combined services retail price.  Please call 866-ZYNCHROS (866-996-2476), option 1 or email us to get started, today.

Webcast October 23rd: Formulary Hosting Revisited

Register Now!

Maybe you saw it the first time around and maybe you didn’t.  Technical difficulties kept us from recording it so here’s your chance to see our updated presentation (yes, we will try to get the recording right this time!) and ask all of your questions about how Zynchros Formulary Hosting can work for your organization.

Register Now!

ZSIGs Update

Member & Provider Communications kicked-off on September 16th – thank you to all of you who attended.  Please be sure to sign up for the online forum – we have our discussion topics listed and the session’s presentation posted on the forum.

Specialty Pharmacy gets underway on September 26th.  We want to say, “thank you,” to Dr. Chris Chan, from Inland Empire Health Plan, for volunteering to be the Specialty Pharmacy ZSIG chair.  If you signed up for this forum but have not received your invitation to the meeting or the online forum, please contact us right away.

Amy Guenette, Pharm. D., vice president product management at SXC Health Solutions has agreed to chair our Adjudication ZSIG.  Thank you, Amy!  We will be announcing the kick-off meeting shortly and sending invites to the online meeting and forum in the coming weeks.

If you have any questions regarding any of the ZSIGs, you can contact one of the following people for answers:

Tips and Tricks: Formulary Maintenance

by Chad Anderson, Zynchros

Have you been putting off the task of cleaning up your formulary maintenance items? Do you know what the number under the “Needs Review” column heading in Zynchros means? If not, don’t worry, you’re not alone.

A little known fact, for many Zynchros users, is that the Zynchros Drug Database is updated weekly; new NDC’s are added, old NDC’s removed, and miscellaneous changes are noted (e.g. NDC 12345678901 has changed from a brand to generic). Zynchros scans your formulary for NDC’s you are referencing that may have been affected by a deletion or change and then alerts you in the “Maintain Formulary” tab. If it’s been a while since you’ve looked at the maintain formulary tab then there may be quite a few items listed.

So, stop putting it off and head over to the “Maintain Formulary” screen and see what’s in store for you; I promise it won’t be that bad. First of all, you don’t need to go through the list of changes one at a time. You can simply filter the results, say for every NDC that has been modified, and then choose to “Bulk Accept” the changes.

You are simply acknowledging the change in a bulk manner rather than looking at each NDC individually – this will have no affect on your formulary because the change happened to the NDC. If you are in a real hurry, you can leave the filter set to “All” and “Bulk Accept” every noted change and the default action will be taken.

Now you might ask, “What is the default action and how does it affect my formulary?” Well, the default action is typically what you might expect; if an NDC is marked as “Deleted” it has already been deleted from your formulary, you are simply letting Zynchros know that you are now aware of this. If the NDC is marked as “Modified” then it has already been modified on your formulary so, once again, the default action is simply acknowledging this fact. The only time the default action may be a little less than desirable is with “Expired” NDC’s. The default is to delete them from your formulary even though they are still technically valid (for a little while longer anyway).

For those of you who have a large number of items that need review but don’t feel comfortable just bulk accepting your acknowledgment of these messages and would prefer to have a hard copy of the items affected, we can do that too. Just head over to the Standard Reports and look for the “Formulary Maintenance Report.” This report will provide you with a list of EVERY item that needs review so you can go through it at your leisure.

Once you have this little task out of the way I encourage you to spend a few minutes every week going through the Maintain Formulary items; it’ll save you more time in the long run than you may imagine. For those of you who would like more details on the “Maintain Formulary” tab I encourage you to check out the Zynchros.com User Guide located in the “Help” menu of Zynchros.com.

Please feel free to contact me with comments, questions and suggestions for future Tips & Tricks at service@zynchros.com or 866-996-2476 option 2.

Did You Miss a Webcast? Want to Share Information with a Colleague?

You know us – online, on-demand, 24/7 – well, that means you can get the information you need when you want it.  Visit our website Resources page and download a webcast, whitepaper or data sheet.  You can also read past issues of Zyntrigues, inspect sample reports and request a demonstration.