AdvancePCS Patient Safety Study Finds Alerts to Pharmacists Avoided 3 Million Potential Adverse Drug Interactions in One Year.

Business Editors/Health/Medical Writers

IRVING, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 27, 2003

A study of patient safety by AdvancePCS (Nasdaq: ADVP), the nation's leading health improvement company, has documented that its sophisticated information systems help avoid nearly 3 million adverse drug interactions annually by instantly alerting pharmacists to potentially harmful or deadly prescribing situations.

The study results show that AdvancePCS' proprietary, online system, connected to virtually every pharmacy in the United States and serving one in every four Americans, issued safety-related alerts for more than 32 million prescriptions in a year. Of that number, 2.9 million prescriptions, or 9 percent, were "reversed," meaning the pharmacist dispensed a safer alternative or cancelled the prescription after consulting with the patient and prescribing physician.

"Out-of-chain" alerts -- meaning alerts based on potential drug utilization interactions involving prescriptions filled at different pharmacy chains -- accounted for 1.1 million of these reversals, including 23 percent of all reversals in the drug-drug interaction category, 22 percent of reversals in the overuse category, and 25 percent of reversals in the ingredient duplication category. These numbers are significant because they represent therapeutic changes that would not have occurred without AdvancePCS' review of a patient's active prescriptions filled at all provider pharmacies.

"Our point-of-service system plays a crucial -- but often overlooked -- role in improving pharmaceutical care safety," said Dr. Joseph Aita, AdvancePCS senior vice president and chief medical officer. "Not only are adverse drug events the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S., they also are estimated to cost as much as $136 billion annually, more than the country's total expense for cardiovascular or diabetic care. This capability saves countless of our plan members from very serious, and even fatal, complications."

AdvancePCS' drug utilization review system conducts safety checks for all prescriptions being dispensed to the members of health plans, employers and other organizations that are clients of the company. The drug utilization review process starts with a pharmacist entering a prescription into the pharmacy's computer system, which is then relayed to the AdvancePCS adjudication system. The AdvancePCS system identifies the patient and verifies the price, eligibility and payment terms. At the same time, the system reviews the patient's active prescription history, which includes every drug the patient has filled at any pharmacy through his or her AdvancePCS membership coverage.

Alerts are sent to the pharmacist when the AdvancePCS system detects any of a number of potential therapeutic conflicts, such as drug-age, drug-allergy, drug-disease, drug-drug, drug-gender, drug-pregnancy, excessive controlled substance, excessive duration/overuse, high dose, ingredient duplication and therapeutic duplication.

Helen Darling, president of the Washington Business Group on Health (www.wbgh.org), a non-profit health policy organization, said, "This exciting study documents in dramatic detail how many potential serious adverse events can be averted when state-of-the-art digital technology is used to prevent avoidable mistakes and protect patients from harm. The human impact and the cost impact of these avoided adverse events are huge."

AdvancePCS manages 550 million prescription claims annually, interacting with a network of 59,000 retail pharmacies across the country. The real-time system also reviews AdvancePCS' own mail service pharmacies. Processing prescription claims electronically for hundreds of thousands of plan members per day, the system delivers important value by flagging potentially harmful drug interactions based on a patient's active prescription history across all provider pharmacies. Although some pharmacies may employ similar electronic alerts, their systems typically are limited to considering only the patient's prescription history filled within their own pharmacy or pharmacy chain.

The study findings, which resulted from a review of 447 million claims filled during 2001, are included in AdvancePCS' Health Improvement Report: Improving Patient Safety, available at www.advancepcs.com. The Health Improvement Report is a periodic, issue-specific publication in which AdvancePCS shares information and knowledge from its unique resources, capabilities and expertise.

About AdvancePCS

AdvancePCS (www.advancepcs.com) is the nation's largest independent provider of health improvement services, touching the lives of more than 75 million health plan members and managing approximately $28 billion in annual prescription drug spending. AdvancePCS offers health plans a wide range of health improvement products and services designed to improve the quality of care delivered to health plan members and manage costs.

The company's capabilities include integrated mail service and retail pharmacy networks, innovative clinical services, customized disease management programs, specialty pharmacy, clinical trials and outcomes research, information management, prescription drug services for the uninsured, and online health information for consumers. AdvancePCS clients include Blue Cross and Blue Shield organizations, insurance companies and HMOs, Fortune 500 employers, Taft-Hartley groups, state and local governments, and other health plan sponsors.

AdvancePCS is ranked by Fortune magazine as one of America's 100 fastest-growing public companies and is included on the Forbes Platinum 400 list of best big companies. AdvancePCS earned the No. 2 spot on the Barron's 500 list of best performing companies. AdvancePCS is both a Fortune 500 and Fortune Global 500 company.