Correctional Health Initiatives Lead to Significant Savings

Working with the UMass Correctional Health Program, which provides health care services for the Massachusetts Department of Correction (DOC), the Clinical Pharmacy Services team supplies the state’s inmate population with evidence-based pharmaceutical care that meets national clinical guidelines — and contains costs.

Since medication accounts for approximately 15 percent of the program’s health care expenditures, our correctional health staff — all clinical pharmacists — designed and implemented initiatives that generate the following savings for the DOC annually:

• $231,000 by contracting with drug manufacturers for inhaled corticosteroids and insulin products
• $175,000 by converting to generic medications 
• $190,000 by switching to alternative dosage forms or preferred drug list brands
• $390,000 by reducing medication waste for HIV and hepatitis C
• $300,000 by using directly observed therapy for HIV medications

These savings amount to approximately 12.7 percent of the DOC’s annual pharmacy budget.

To encourage providers to adapt their prescribing patterns to match recommended clinical guidelines, we work closely with correctional and clinical administration, inmate advocacy groups, and prescribers. We use multiple approaches to make correctional health pharmacy expenditures more cost effective:

• Use formulary management to streamline access to effective medications
• Monitor outcomes to ensure clinical safety
• Initiate and implement disease state management programs
• Conduct drug utilization reviews on high-cost and high-risk issues
• Analyze claims to identify areas for intervention
• Contract with pharmaceutical manufacturers to reduce prices
• Consider reasonable alternatives to nonformulary requests
• Provide drug information and education to providers and patients

Our correctional health management programs can be customized, depending on the needs your organization’s requirements. Our pharmacists have experience in managed care and emphasize cost containment, formulary design and management, and disease state management in their recommendations. Since we do not provide or ship prescription drugs directly, we can focus solely on providing clinical services to the inmates and working closely with the medical providers who provide the direct care in the corrections facilities.