The Next Evolution In Pharmacy Benefits Strategy

As healthcare becomes increasingly complex, connected healthcare data matters. Looking beyond isolated pharmacy costs can reveal new opportunities to address total cost of care, while creating a more coordinated experience for employees.

Why Integrate Medical And Pharmacy? 

Integration is essential to avoid fragmented care, rising costs, and missed opportunities to optimize medications. Healthcare has always been interconnected, but health insurance benefits are often managed separately. Medical, pharmacy, and behavioral health needs often overlap, particularly among members managing chronic conditions.

When medications aren’t optimized, costs add up:

• ER visits >1.5M annually¹
• Hospitalizations ~500k annually¹
• Hospitalization admissions ~8-14% medication-related²

These findings show that overall healthcare benefits require combining the right medications to achieve the right results.

Integration In Action

Anthem’s pharmacy benefit manager, CarelonRx, is helping advance a more connected approach by bringing medical and pharmacy strategies together to support better decisions, stronger outcomes, and greater affordability.

In the CarelonRx e-book, Integration isn’t Optional Anymore, explore why integration is becoming a business imperative and what a more connected approach could mean for the future of pharmacy benefits.

Download the e-book to learn more.

1 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: FastStats: Medication Safety Data (April 17, 2024): cdc.gov.

2 National Library of Medicine: Which Adverse Events and Which Drugs Are Implicated in Drug-Related Hospital Admissions? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (February 7, 2023): pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.