Controversy heats up over pharmacy benefit manager DIR fees

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Pharmacy benefits managers (PBMs) are in hot water again if small and specialty pharmacies’ voices can be heard. Besides a litany of complaints from various pharmacy industry stakeholders about PBM operations and business tactics—from a lack of transparency to controlling formularies—now PBMs are being accused of retroactively applying direct and indirect remuneration fees (DIR) to pharmacies.

DIR fees—arrangements between Part D plans/PBMs and pharmacies—include fees for network participation, periodic reimbursement conciliations, failure to comply with quality measures and the gap between a target reimbursement rate in a pharmacy agreement and the aggregated rate actually realized by a pharmacy. They fees often are assessed at different intervals rather than at point of sale (POS).

A paper commissioned by the Community Oncology Alliance and prepared by Frier Levitt law firm, describes original DIR fees as payments or other reimbursement received by PBMs from a variety of sources to lower the ultimate “true cost” of a medication. That has since transitioned into “backdoor” fees imposed by PBMs on pharmacy providers after a drug claim is submitted, adjudicated and even paid out to a pharmacy, according to the paper.

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