Medicare Part D: an overview of its practical and clinical impact

The Medicare Part D outpatient prescription drug benefit will transform American health care delivery. In addition to increasing access to medicines, it will have a profound impact on physicians and drug developers. Senior citizens and other Medicare recipients will be forced to come to terms with a complex benefit structure and to make difficult choices. Physicians will have to help their patients navigate the new benefit as well as adjust their practices to deal with multiple formularies with different coverage policies. Medicare is creating a framework for collecting evidence, both from studies of comparative efficacy of drugs and from automated tracking of outcomes.