[2] High touch refers to higher degree of complexity in terms of distribution, administration, or patient management which drives up the cost of the drugs.
[11][12]: 123 At that time, according to Genzyme CEO Henri Termeer — a pioneer in the biotechnology industry business model — one treatment of Ceredase for one patient took 22,000 placentas annually to manufacture, a difficult and expensive procedure.
[13] In marketing imiglucerase, Termeer introduced the innovative and successful business strategy that became a model for the biotechnology or life sciences industry in general and specialty pharmacy in particular.
[13] In 2005 he then created what would eventually become a feature service of specialty pharmacy, by hiring 34 people to help patients acquire insurance plans that would cover the cost of their drugs.
[13] In 1992 Stadtlanders Pharmacy — a subsidiary of Bergen Brunswig Corporation — was a grassroots company in Pittsburgh that occupied one floor of a seven-story office building and had only a handful of employees and sold drugs by mail-order to patients with chronic conditions with "higher-than-average prescription prices".
In 1992 this included "ancillary to primary therapy to manage side effects, as well as HIV, transplant, and a new growth area, multiple sclerosis (MS).
They would fill out the cumbersome insurance paperwork for patients to secure reimbursement — often from Medicare — coordinate "benefits to eliminate the potentially enormous out-of-pocket costs."
"In 1999 CVS launched ProCare, a "chain of specialty pharmacies, about 1,500 square feet in size, serving patients with chronic diseases and conditions that require complex and expensive drug regimens."
These organizations typically have the muscle to negotiate better prices and frequently offer a complete menu of specialty pharmaceuticals and related services to serve as an attractive 'one-stop shop' for health plans and employers.
"[20] Specialty pharmacy offers services such as "adherence management, benefits investigation, and patient education, and the challenge of space limitations for item stocking.
[4] According to the American Pharmacists Association (APhA), "Historically, a pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) is a third-party administrator of prescription drug programs.
For the most part, they work with self-insured companies and government programs striving to maintain or reduce the pharmacy expenditures of the plan while concurrently trying to improve health care outcomes.