The Average Wholesale Price (AWP) has long been the drug price benchmark for establishing reimbursement payment terms between payers, PBM’s, and pharmacies. Created in 1969 by George Pennebaker to address the need for a reference price to adjudicate California Medicaid drug claims, AWP became the standard nationwide as the shift from paper to real-time drug reimbursement claims required the use of common pricing fields. However, as early as the 1980’s, industry pundits referred to AWP as “ain’t what’s paid” because of the common and significant gap between AWP and the actual acquisition cost of a drug.
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Meaningful Use and Medication
- By: Kathy Vieson, PharmD, BCOP
- 22 Comments
So much has been written, and so much angst suffered, regarding meaningful use incentives, requirements, and attestation that it is easy to lose sight of the objective that the rule is intended to accomplish. So, as a brief reminder, meaningful use (MU) is a rule established by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) to facilitate “the exchange and use of health information to best inform clinical decisions at the point of care,” as specified by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).
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