Successful PBM RFPs
Ever-increasing prescription coverage costs plague all health plans — whether they are corporate, union or government plans. To decrease their costs, most plans conduct RFPs (Requests for Proposal) to force PBMs to compete against each other. However, almost all RFPs result in virtually the identical PBM contract, and the same, or even higher, drug costs. Thus, most PBM RFPs prove to be of little - if any - value.
Pharmacy Benefit Consultants is working to transform the prescription coverage marketplace to enable all health plans to dramatically decrease their costs through successful RFPs.
Accordingly, we have created a two-part video - and written and published several articles — to help all health plans do so. Download our materials - for free - and review them in the privacy of your office - and you will be take the first steps toward conducting an effective PBM RFP.
Download: Video - Part I
Download: Video - Part II
Download: Cover Story Article in the IFEBP’s Journal: “How to Conduct A Successful PBM RFP”
About Pharmacy Benefit Consultants’ RFPs: Our RFPs typically result in our clients saving at least 10% over their previous year’s costs. How do we obtain such dramatically better results?
Because when our firm conducts RFPs, we do so in an entirely different manner from all other consulting firms in the country: Other firms conduct RFPs as if they are “beauty contests”: They obtain “projections” and “promises” from PBMs that the consulting firms than analyze, but never obtain binding contract terms from any PBM contestant. As a result, the PBMs’ “projections” and “promises” are never incorporated into clients’ actual contracts, and the consulting firms’ RFPs prove to be of little (if any) value.
In contrast, our firm realizes that a PBM RFP must be a legal process to extract the best possible, binding contract terms from each PBM contestant.
Accordingly, we draft an entirely different form of contract for our clients at the beginning of the RFP, issue our RFP with our contract attached, and demand that all PBM contestants accept our form of contract (or be eliminated from the RFP).
During the RFP, we use the RFP “competition” to extract better and better, binding pricing terms and guarantees from PBM contestants, memorializing all such terms in the contracts that we have drafted, and thereafter requiring all contestants to sign and thereby bind themselves to the terms they have proposed.
As a result, when we analyze PBM contestants’ numbers toward the end of our RFPs, we are analyzing the actual numbers that your plan will be paying when it selects a PBM — not PBMs’ “promises” and “projections” about what they might - but never do - implement.
Moreover, while most consulting firms conclude their RFPs when a Finalist is selected - without ever having discussed, let alone finalized the PBM contract - on the day our RFPs are over, our clients are in a position to sign an entirely different form of contract that has been thoroughly negotiated during the RFP.
We urge your plan to contact Pharmacy Benefit Consultants for a free consultation on conducting a successful PBM RFP. If your plan has already begun its RFP - and now realizes your consulting firm is without the legal skills to draft and negotiate an entirely different form of contract - we urge your plan to contact Pharmacy Benefit Consultants to salvage your RFP, before it is too late.
Other plans have done so, and thereby rectified the situation, obtaining from their RFPs an “airtight” PBM contract resulting in dramatically lower costs. Your plan can do so as well.