CAR T-cell therapies have given new hope to patients with relapsed/refractory (R/R) non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) and more recently to patients with R/R multiple myeloma. Priced at more than $350,000 per infusion, these therapies also come with unique administrative and budgetary challenges for managed care organizations (MCOs) and providers. As the market for these novel therapies gains ground, we explore how MCO pharmacy directors and medical directors (PDs/MDs) approach reimbursement of these expensive new therapies for NHL and multiple myeloma and how reimbursement decisions in their largest commercial and Medicare Advantage plans impact prescribing among surveyed hematologist-oncologists.
Questions Answered
What are hematologist-oncologists’ and payers’ assessments of the efficacy and safety of CAR T-cell therapies used to treat NHL, including Novartis’s Kymriah, Gilead / Kite’s Yescarta and Tecartus, and Celgene / Bristol Myers Squibb’s Breyanzi—all for NHL?
How are CAR T-cell therapies covered in commercial and Medicare plans and what kind of contracts and payment schemes are commonly used by MCOs to address the therapies’ high cost?
Now that two CAR-T cell therapies are approved for multiple myeloma—Janssen’s Carvykti and Bluebird Bio / Bristol Myers Squibb’s Abecma—how will payers and physicians respond to competition from emerging bispecific antibodies that offer less-complex treatment than CAR T-cell therapies?
What prior authorization requirements and other utilization management controls do payers apply to CAR T-cell therapy, and how do these restrictions affect prescribing by hematologist-oncologists?
What factors drive physicians’ choice of a particular CAR T-cell therapy and which, if any, CAR-T cell therapies would they prescribe in an earlier line of therapy?
Content Highlights
Geography: United States.
Primary research: Survey of 100 U.S. hematologist-oncologists; survey of 42 U.S. managed care organization (MCO) pharmacy and medical directors (PDs / MDs).
Opportunities and challenges for emerging therapies
Product Description
U.S. Access & Reimbursement provides integrated brand- and disease-level insight on reimbursement dynamics and the impact of U.S. payer policy on physician prescribing behavior in the market access environment, including up-to-date analysis of drug coverage and restriction policies and payer and prescriber perspectives on key marketed drugs and receptivity to emerging therapies.
Access & Reimbursement | CAR T-cell therapy in non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and multiple myeloma / US / November 2022
Chris Lewis
Chris Lewis, Lead Healthcare Research & Data Analyst, U.S. Access and Reimbursement. Ms. Lewis is responsible for the coordination, content review, and content generation of U.S. Access & Reimbursement reports, including managing the primary research activities and authoring select A&R reports on managed care trends. Ms. Lewis has been with Clarivate and its prior-associated companies since 2006. Before this position, Ms. Lewis was a senior analyst who launched and authored Clarivate’s Pharmacy Benefit Manager profile series and analyzed the managed care markets in California, New York, and Pennsylvania. She received her bachelor’s degree from California State University in Sacramento.
Elliott Puttock, Ph.D
Elliott Puttock, M.Res., Ph.D., is an analyst on the Oncology team at Clarivate. He has experience working in the pharmaceutical sector developing novel therapeutics for ongoing oncology projects. While earning his Ph.D., he specialized in metastatic ovarian cancer and focused on targeting the extracellular matrix to develop new treatments for patients. He obtained his doctorate from Barts Cancer Institute in London.