As policymakers debate adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, they must also seek ways to promote cost-effective use of drugs and minimize inappropriate prescribing. For more than a decade, all state Medicaid agencies and most private insurers have used computerized drug utilization review (DUR) programs to prevent or rectify potential prescribing errors. DUR can be retrospective, in w...

background: granulocyte colony stimulating factors (gcsf) are high cost agents commonly recommended for primary and secondary prophylaxis of chemotherapy-induced neutropenia and febrile neutropenia. gcsfs have been shown to be beneficial in some patient subgroups, although they are probably overused in clinical settings. the american society of clinical oncology (asco) guidelines summarize curr...

BACKGROUND The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 offered the promise that prospective drug utilization review (pDUR) systems would improve the quality of drug prescribing and patient drug use. There is little evidence that this promise has been fulfilled. To the contrary, there is growing evidence that suboptimal use of drugs (in terms of preventable drug-related morbidity) is at least ...

CONTEXT Retrospective drug utilization review is required of all state Medicaid programs and is performed by most private-sector prescription programs. However, it has not been shown to improve clinical outcomes or reduce the rate of potential prescribing errors, known as "exceptions." OBJECTIVE To look for an effect of retrospective drug utilization review on the rate of exceptions and of cl...

BACKGROUND Adoption of step therapy (ST) is quickly outpacing the market's understanding of its clinical, humanistic, and economic outcomes. The broad scope of previous reviews of drug management programs has prohibited an in-depth discussion of the ST literature specifically. OBJECTIVE To conduct a critical review of ST program evaluations, discuss their policy implications, and provide reco...

The findings show that with the development of a multitude of safe and effective drugs during the later part of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, drugs are, as never before, a true mainstay of medical treatment. CMS continues to monitor drug utilization and expenditures in all of its programs in order to ensure that care is rendered in a cost-effective manner that is benef...

Grant Agreement nr 611057 Project acronym EUMSSI Start date of project (dur.) December 1st 2013 (36 months) Document due Date : 31 May 2014 Actual date of delivery 6 June 2014 Leader LUH Reply to [email protected] Document status Submitted