Considerations in Darbepoetin alfa Cost and Reimbursement: A Model for Pharmacy Managers

With health care administrators focusing on the financial aspects of patient care, pharmacy budget managers must be able to evaluate all financial implications of drugs under formulary review. Clinical considerations, dosing equivalency, direct and indirect costs, payer mix, and reimbursement level are issues that should be considered by a multidisciplinary team. A pharmacoeconomic evaluation of darbepoetin alfa compared with epoetin alfa is presented as a model to help pharmacy budget managers address these issues and develop an evaluation of two high-cost drugs to determine which would be the better agent to have on their formulary.