Three weeks ago a group of stakeholders in Maryland decided physician dispensing wasn’t that bad [scroll down in link].

These stakeholders agreed to not do anything legislatively to address doc dispensing for another two years because their own analysis had indicated physician dispensing in MD was not changing.  Now, a lobbyist for physician dispensing “technology” firm Automated Healthcare Solutions has penned an opinion piece that can only be described as a hit job on WCRI, a highly respected research organization.

There are two related problems here.

• It’s obvious the doc dispensers’ strategy is to try to discredit WCRI – no other reason to publish an editorial in a paper in a state that you’ve already won.
• The stakeholders that signed the letter agreeing to forgo any legislation ignored research from Johns Hopkins University (located in Maryland) proving physician dispensing is associated with much worse patient outcomes.

I won’t dignify the lobbyist’s moronic prattling with a point-by-point rebuttal; WCRI already has in the measured, professional, and very precise way that is the hallmark of academic research. Suffice it to say that the lobbyist’s own writing shows he is even less knowledgeable about statistics, research standards, and data analytics than our Newfies are.

This guy calling out WCRI on statistical analysis is akin to me telling Blake Shelton he doesn’t know the music business.

Next, in a letter citing the Maryland Workers’ Compensation Commission, the stakeholders asserted “contrary to previous trends reported by the Workers’ Compensation Research Institute, Maryland claimants received a smaller proportion of prescription drugs dispensed directly from their physicians, as compared with prescriptions dispensed from pharmacies.”  After much review, my conclusion is this – there are differences in the methodologies used by the MWCC and WCRI – but those differences do NOT mean WCRI’s work is wrong.

First, the data collection process the stakeholders used to come up with their conclusion is not as rigorous as it could – and likely should – have been. For example, they asked multiple sources for data on physician dispensing, but failed to provide tight criteria or definitions for these sources to categorize the data. As a result, the findings are questionable because the sources may well have:

• used different criteria to identify “physician dispensers”
• used different definitions of “repackaged” drugs
• differing ability to identify what entity dispensed a drug
• differing ability to differentiate between physician-owned “pharmacies” and retail pharmacies
• different definitions of “generic” and “branded” drugs

Second, the MWCC analysis used an entirely different methodology than WCRI, a methodology that, among other factors, included different time periods and a different set of claims.  It is NOT surprising that different data sets, different methodologies, different time lines yield different results.

On its own initiative, WCRI used the stakeholders’ methodology in an attempt to understand the discrepancy, with the following result:

When we replicate the data and methods used by the Commission on the data used in our Maryland draft study, we get 16.7 percent where the Commission reported that 15.7 percent of prescriptions were dispensed at physicians’ offices. Hence, when we use similar methods on different data sets, we get similar results.

Ignored in the lobbyist’s “editorial”, and by the stakeholders as well, is this:

In the last published WCRI study on this topic, Maryland was compared to 20 other larger than average states. We found that physician dispensing in Maryland was more frequent than in 17 of these 20 states—twice as common as in the median state, [emphasis added] and four times more frequent than in the neighboring state of Virginia. 

Rather than get into a “mine’s better than your’s” conversation, here’s what we know.

There’s no question Maryland has a very large physician dispensing problem – one that all the research indicates is likely driving worse outcomes for patients and higher costs for employers and taxpayers.  The really troubling thing here is the stakeholders know, or should have known outcomes may be significantly and adversely affected by doc-dispensed drugs, yet went along with the deal.

In conversations with stakeholders, I asked why they didn’t consider this, and got no answer.  When I pressed and asked if they were going to work with JHU’s researchers to look at outcomes, I was told they “may have to think about that.”

Think about…what?

I don’t think these stakeholders are bad people or ill-intentioned; they do have a lot on their collective plate.

I do think they have – for their own reasons, which may make sense to them – given up the fight against physician dispensing.

In so doing, they are missing out on an opportunity to help Maryland employers, taxpayers, and injured workers.

They are also empowering the dispensers in other states.

What does this mean for you?

All the research indicates physician dispensing increases disability duration, indemnity expense and medical costs.  THAT is what Maryland should study.

Note – in the interest of full disclosure, I am (as most of you already know) president of CompPharma LLC, a consortium of workers’ compensation PBMs. It’s also important for readers to know that it matters not one iota to me financially if physician dispensing increases or decreases.

It does matter to me personally as it is flat out wrong. It is bad policy that is damaging the many to enrich a very few.