URAC to conduct workshop highlighting multiple aspects of medication adherence

Accreditation Organization to Present Medication Metrics Workshop at Pharmacy Benefit Management Institute Conference

URAC, the nation's leading health care accreditation and education organization, will conduct a workshop on "Medication Adherence and Medication Possession Ratio as a Critical Metric" at the 15th Annual Pharmacy Benefit Management Institute (PBMI) Conference in Phoenix, Ariz. The session will highlight the organization's revised Performance Measurement Reporting Standards for its Pharmacy Benefit Management (PBM) and Drug Therapy Management (DTM) Accreditation programs.

"The addition of new measures to our pharmacy programs augments the powerful advantage of URAC accreditation by allowing organizations to demonstrate quantitative results to employers and other purchasers," said Alan P. Spielman, president and CEO of URAC. "Our reporting standards give purchasers a way to objectively compare and evaluate pharmacy management services in terms of consumer engagement, cost effectiveness, and consumer and client satisfaction."

To provide more information on the Medication Possession Ratio measure, Lynn Martin, PhD, RPh, Director of Research Services for URAC, and Terri Smith Moore, PhD, MBA, RPh, Pharmacy Accreditation Reviewer for URAC, will lead a workshop on February 17 at the PBMI Conference to address multiple aspects of medication adherence. John Jones, RPh, JD, senior vice president of professional practice and pharmacy policy at Prescription Solutions and chairman of URAC's Pharmacy Accreditation Advisory Group, will also offer insights on how to apply the revised standards in a real world setting, including how plan sponsors can work with pharmacy benefit managers to improve medication adherence.

"Providing measurement and accountability is important to vendors, consumers, and purchasers alike," said Mr. Jones. "Ultimately, these new performance measures will allow purchasers to make objective comparisons across organizations when they are evaluating pharmacy services vendors. They allow the PBM industry to show transparency to regulators and purchasers, which is important to build public trust."

URAC's path for developing mandatory performance measures is a multi-year, three phase approach. First, organizations report mandatory measures to URAC, placing a particular focus on internal performance improvement and oversight activities. Phase two requires those measures to be externally audited or verified, and URAC then makes composite measurement data available to participating organizations and interested third parties. In the last phase, URAC publishes the detailed public reports on its website with specific information by organization. In addition to its PBM and DTC programs, URAC is adding performance measures to several other programs.