Green Bay Distributor Saves Over $400k in Pharmacy Spend
Client:
LaForce – a Green Bay-based distributor and solutions provider of commercial door opening products and services.
Issue:
Like many other organizations today, LaForce was experiencing increased pharmacy spend and felt like they had little control over it. As a large organization, a small group of plan members were driving costs with specialty drugs.
Though they were experiencing rising costs, LaForce was committed to their employees and their company culture. They were determined to find a solution that would still allow their employees to get the medications that they needed at the lowest cost.
Impact on Green Bay Distributor:
M3 vetted many vendors, and ultimately helped LaForce implement a new pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) with a third-party specialty drug cost containment company.
The logistics behind this move made pharmacy spend less of a challenge for LaForce. LaForce could exclude specialty drugs from their medical pharmacy plan, and employees, dependents, and spouses who used those drugs would be referred to the specialty drug cost containment company.
That company would help them determine eligibility for copay assistance programs and manufacturer discounts that would still cover the costs of their specialty drugs.
If for some reason the employee wasn’t eligible for these alternative forms of payment, LaForce’s pharmacy plan would cover the cost of the specialty drug. That means there was no cost-shifting to plan participants with this strategy.
Through the end of their plan year, that specialty drug cost containment company helped LaForce save $407,000, roughly a 40% decrease from the year before.
Without the savings provided by the vendors M3 brought to the table, LaForce would have experienced a 9.3% increase to their pharmacy spend instead.
Much of the success of this strategy is owed to the company culture that LaForce has created. Because employees knew they could trust their employer to make decisions that best served them, they were open to this out-of-the-box solution.
The LaForce transition to M3 has made a significant impact on our benefit planning. Jason Shanda and team have provided us with creative solutions that support our mission to our employees and control the bottom line. The team has provided us with alternative solutions that have resulted in significant expense savings. They are our advocate for quality service from our vendors and do an excellent job of anticipating both needs and problems so that we are ahead of the curve. They understand our corporate culture and, most importantly, they are our true partner all year long.
— Amy Charais
LaForce
Partnering with M3
Pharmacy spend continues to rise for organizations across industries. Working with M3 means you’re working with a broker who educates you on market trends, protects you from future unknown costs, and brings proactive, innovative strategies to the table to lower your spend while taking care of your employees.
