(Washington, D.C.) — The Pharmaceutical Care Management Association (PCMA) today released a new, first-of-its-kind, progress report on the work PCMA member pharmacy benefit companies are doing to deepen the industry’s commitment to promote health equity and reduce health disparities. This report highlights pharmacy-benefit-company-specific examples and provides resources to learn more about each company’s efforts in this area.

“The mission of our companies has always been to provide affordable access to prescription drugs for everyone,” said JC Scott, PCMA President and CEO. “We are committed to taking action as an industry to support policies that advance a more equitable, patient-centered health care system, reduce disparities in clinical outcomes, and improve the quality and affordability of pharmaceutical care for all. Our progress report shows that our companies are not only talking about progress, but they’re also actively making it happen.”

In 2021, PCMA’s members came together to formally declare the PBM industry’s commitment to health equity and selected four key areas of focus:

• Address disparities in access, disease burden, and outcomes.
• Promote equitable, affordable pharmacy benefit design.
• Create a culture of equity and person-centered care.
• Invest in meaningful data, evidence, and measurement.

The results of the progress report demonstrate that PCMA members are meeting the industry commitment and remaining steadfastly focused on advancing health equity.

Pharmacy benefit companies participating in the progress report are The Cigna Group, CVS Health, Elevance Health, Humana, Optum Rx, PerformRx, and Prime Therapeutics LLC.

Examples of pharmacy benefit companies’ work on health equity include:

• The Cigna Group established a Model Equity Governance process to ensure its algorithms and predictive model practices are consistent with its commitment to health equity, including a comprehensive procedure for model equity and algorithmic bias identification and mitigation.
• CVS Health’s Project Health program has provided no-cost health screenings and health care resources to historically marginalized communities for nearly 20 years. In 2022, Project Health provided $5.5 million in free medical services in underserved communities nationwide.
• Elevance Health has implemented a program called MyNEXUS Social Drivers, which provides in-home risk assessments for health-related social needs and resource connectivity to help remove barriers and improve care coordination and delivery.
• Humana is focused on areas that impact health disparities and influence health outcomes and patient experiences, including by improving access to care by expanding utilization of primary care and preventive care services; improving quality of care through steps such as developing a culturally empathetic communication approach, electronic health record integration, and clinician resources to provide preventive and chronic disease care; and addressing non-medical barriers to healthy living such as health-related social needs health literacy, and the broader social, physical, and economic environments where patients live and access care.
• Optum Rx’s health equity efforts focus on three key areas: increasing affordability, improving access to medications, and advocating for better practices such as leveraging its expertise in data and analytics to address disparities in care.
• PerformRx is sponsoring multiple associate resource groups for all associates across several states, including training and programs focused on promoting allyship in the workplace and community volunteerism.
• Prime Therapeutics LLC requires cultural competency training for all customer-facing roles and has invested in practices and training to assist non-English speaking members and has multilingual member communication and contact center support. In addition, it has developed specific utilization management to facilitate and bring access and coverage for patients who need gender-affirming therapies.

Click here to read the full report.

Click here to view the website.

Click here to read PCMA’s organizational commitment to diversity, inclusion, and equity.

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PCMA is the national association representing America’s pharmacy benefit companies. Pharmacy benefit companies are working every day to secure savings, enable better health outcomes, and support access to quality prescription drug coverage for more than 275 million patients. Learn more at www.pcmanet.org