Biosimilars are coming, and they are going to have an impact on the practice of rheumatology.
But there’s no need to worry. Sessions at this year’s American College of Rheumatology annual meeting will bring attendees up to date about what they need to know to stay ahead of the issue. Biosimilars are just one of a slew of topics to be presented this year to help rheumatologists keep their practices strong with the latest information on regulatory issues, practice management, electronic health records, coding, business models, and other matters.
Dr. Colin Edgerton
A major issue with biosimilars is whether pharmacists will be able to substitute them for familiar brand name biologics, and whether they’ll have to notify rheumatologists when they do so. It’s an extension of the generic switch issue, only more fraught because there’s a greater gap between branded biologics and their biosimilar counterparts than between traditional small-molecule drugs and their generics.
States regulate pharmacy practice, and it’s unclear how they’ll come down on the issue. Even so, the biosimilar industry is already at work in statehouses laying the groundwork to allow for easy swaps in the pharmacy.
“Biosimilars in Rheumatology,” a clinical science presentation on Sunday, Nov. 8, at 4:30 p.m., will let rheumatologists know what biosimilar rollouts “might look like in their own states, and what to watch out for. A lot of what will happen is likely to be determined at the state level,” said Dr. Colin Edgerton, a rheumatologist in North Charleston, S.C., and one of the many planners of this year’s meeting.
The session will also go into the experience in Europe, where biosimilar infliximab is one of several biosimilars already on the market, touching upon efficacy, safety, European regulatory solutions, and other matters.
The biosimilar talks dovetail nicely with a Monday, Nov. 9, session at 1:00 p.m. entitled “An Hour Well Spent: Successful Stories of Members Enhancing Patient Care Through State Advocacy.”
There’s a real push in rheumatology “to affect practice management at the state level. The point of this session is to bring together people who have been successful at the state level in forging relationships with decision makers. Those people will educate us on how practicing rheumatologist can impact the state legislature to get things done,” for instance by limiting troublesome insurance company policies such as step therapy and working towards uniform prescription authorization forms. Such issues are better addressed at the state level because things are too much of a patchwork in the United States to be sorted out at the federal level, Dr. Edgerton said.
Meanwhile, “Practice Without Walls,” a Monday session at 4:30 p.m., will explain how independent rheumatology practices can pool resources to improve quality of care and reduce costs, even across town or state divides. It’s one way to stay independent at a time of increasing consolidation.
The goal is to “allow integration without necessarily selling your practice to an established hospital group that has no particular interest in rheumatology. There are a lot of details to doing that; this will be an opportunity to learn from people who have done it successfully, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel,” said Dr. Edgerton, one of the moderators for the session.
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