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A Pilot Program to Teach Pharmacy Students Practical Skills to Navigate Drug Insurance Benefits

Pharmacists must be able to navigate prescription drug coverages to help providers and patients reduce out-of-pocket costs. Traditionally, curricula on drug insurance benefits rely on lectures and lack a practicum that offers students hands-on experience with determining formulary and cost-sharing i...

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Autores principales: Masuda, Camlyn, Huynh, Tony, Wong, Veronica, DeJong, Colette, Tseng, Chien-Wen
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8878890/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35202072
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy10010023
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author Masuda, Camlyn
Huynh, Tony
Wong, Veronica
DeJong, Colette
Tseng, Chien-Wen
author_facet Masuda, Camlyn
Huynh, Tony
Wong, Veronica
DeJong, Colette
Tseng, Chien-Wen
author_sort Masuda, Camlyn
collection PubMed
description Pharmacists must be able to navigate prescription drug coverages to help providers and patients reduce out-of-pocket costs. Traditionally, curricula on drug insurance benefits rely on lectures and lack a practicum that offers students hands-on experience with determining formulary and cost-sharing information. An activity for pharmacy students to update a free public website that summarizes formularies and copayment requirements across major insurers was piloted. Pharmacy students were trained to locate online formularies and identify a drug’s coverage tier, step therapy, prior authorization, and cost-sharing during a 6-week experiential rotation. Students checked formularies from six insurance plans for 250-plus drugs across 15 health conditions. Graduates were surveyed (74% response rate) about the activities’ impact on their learning and ability to navigate drug benefits. Respondents rated the training as helpful in learning whether a drug was covered (100%), or required step therapy or prior authorization (100%). The majority of graduates reported being able to look up formulary coverage (90%), step therapy or prior authorization (90%), and copayment requirements (65%). Our innovative skills-based pilot activity was effective in teaching pharmacy students to navigate insurance formularies, which is essential for helping patients access medications.
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spelling pubmed-88788902022-02-26 A Pilot Program to Teach Pharmacy Students Practical Skills to Navigate Drug Insurance Benefits Masuda, Camlyn Huynh, Tony Wong, Veronica DeJong, Colette Tseng, Chien-Wen Pharmacy (Basel) Article Pharmacists must be able to navigate prescription drug coverages to help providers and patients reduce out-of-pocket costs. Traditionally, curricula on drug insurance benefits rely on lectures and lack a practicum that offers students hands-on experience with determining formulary and cost-sharing information. An activity for pharmacy students to update a free public website that summarizes formularies and copayment requirements across major insurers was piloted. Pharmacy students were trained to locate online formularies and identify a drug’s coverage tier, step therapy, prior authorization, and cost-sharing during a 6-week experiential rotation. Students checked formularies from six insurance plans for 250-plus drugs across 15 health conditions. Graduates were surveyed (74% response rate) about the activities’ impact on their learning and ability to navigate drug benefits. Respondents rated the training as helpful in learning whether a drug was covered (100%), or required step therapy or prior authorization (100%). The majority of graduates reported being able to look up formulary coverage (90%), step therapy or prior authorization (90%), and copayment requirements (65%). Our innovative skills-based pilot activity was effective in teaching pharmacy students to navigate insurance formularies, which is essential for helping patients access medications. MDPI 2022-01-27 /pmc/articles/PMC8878890/ /pubmed/35202072 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy10010023 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Masuda, Camlyn
Huynh, Tony
Wong, Veronica
DeJong, Colette
Tseng, Chien-Wen
A Pilot Program to Teach Pharmacy Students Practical Skills to Navigate Drug Insurance Benefits
title A Pilot Program to Teach Pharmacy Students Practical Skills to Navigate Drug Insurance Benefits
title_full A Pilot Program to Teach Pharmacy Students Practical Skills to Navigate Drug Insurance Benefits
title_fullStr A Pilot Program to Teach Pharmacy Students Practical Skills to Navigate Drug Insurance Benefits
title_full_unstemmed A Pilot Program to Teach Pharmacy Students Practical Skills to Navigate Drug Insurance Benefits
title_short A Pilot Program to Teach Pharmacy Students Practical Skills to Navigate Drug Insurance Benefits
title_sort pilot program to teach pharmacy students practical skills to navigate drug insurance benefits
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8878890/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35202072
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/pharmacy10010023
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