Biosimilars: Opportunities to Promote Optimization Through Payer and Provider Collaboration

A panel was convened that consisted of 1 medical director, 2 pharmacy directors, and 2 oncologists, who represented the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Health Plan, an integrated delivery network, and Florida Blue, a progressive regional health plan. This panel met in order to share ideas, discuss challenges, and develop practical solutions to promote optimal utilization in order to encourage collaboration between payers and providers to help ensure the success of biosimilar entrants into the marketplace. Live meetings were conducted in Orlando, Florida, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and were followed by virtual meetings to solidify ideas and concepts for this supplement. It is important for biosimilar manufacturers to identify potential payer, provider, and patient obstacles in order to develop strategic and tactical plans to preemptively address these potential obstacles. Gathering payer and provider insights will shed light on various issues such as access and reimbursement. Biosimilar manufacturers must be proactive in the education of payers, providers, and patients to ensure access to biosimilars. A strong factor emphasized among this group was that the assumption surrounding biosimilar development and use is the potential for health care cost savings. According to the panel, payers and providers must carefully consider economic implications and potential cost-effectiveness in order to increase the acceptance or understanding of biosimilars in clinical practice. The group identified 3 major challenges surrounding biosimilar adoption: (1) provider confidence in biosimilar education and clinical value, (2) provider confidence in reimbursement for new biosimilars, and (3) creating shared payer and provider cost-savings. After identification of the 3 challenges, the group posed potential solutions to help with biosimilar adoption.