Media Relations

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                             

Contact: Diane Stollenwerk, Communication & Development Director (206.448.2570 x117)

             April Zepeda, Media Relations, The Everett Clinic (425.304.1139)

Generic drugs mean value - effective treatment and lower cost at The Everett Clinic

Puget Sound Health Alliance's Community Checkup measures gap between generic and brand-name drug prescriptions

Everett, WA - October 21, 2009 At The Everett Clinic, patients are getting the medications they need at a more affordable price.

The Snohomish County-based medical group has been prescribing generics for more than a decade. A recent Puget Sound Health Alliance report - The Community Checkup - revealed that significant variation exists between medical groups when it comes to prescribing generic versus brand-name drugs.

Prescription drugs are an important part of health care for many patients and generic drugs usually cost less and often work just as well as brand-name drugs.

The Puget Sound Health Alliance encourages other medical groups to learn how The Everett Clinic has improved health care value within its own organization by getting more patients to take generic rather than brand-name prescription drugs, when a generic alternative is readily available.

The Puget Sound Health Alliance has a two-fold goal in focusing on local success stories like The Everett Clinic, said Executive Director Mary McWilliams. "We want to shine the light on innovative practices in this region and we want to encourage local health care organizations to share ideas with each other so more groups adopt practices that improve health care value."

The Everett Clinic, a multi-specialty medical group with 310 physicians and 100 midlevel providers, provides care for 275,000 patients in north and central Snohomish County. More than a decade ago its top officials began to weigh changing old habits. The results have been far-reaching across the entire medical group.

Rick Cooper, The Everett Clinic's Chief Executive Officer, said "as early as 1997 we decided to hire clinical pharmacists to ensure we could provide quality health care even as we optimized the use of medications which we believed would result in the lowest costs.

"The focus on utilizing generics began then and has continued as our market has changed."

One way to reflect the value of these efforts is to calculate the difference between what insurance plans pay for The Everett Clinic patients' prescriptions and what they pay for non Everett Clinic patients in Washington state. Given this, The Everett Clinic saves an estimated $88 million a year by prescribing generic drugs and using other interventions.

In order to optimize the use of generic drugs where appropriate, The Everett Clinic did the following:

• Hired clinical pharmacists;
• Closed pharmaceutical representatives' access to the clinics and disallowed the distribution of free drug samples;
• Provided on-going education to clinical staff and provider teams on the best use of medications;
• Evaluated new and current drugs carefully, utilizing an evidence-based medicine approach;
• Provided doctors and other health care providers comparative and individual feedback on prescribing patterns based on health plan data;
• Focused on common categories of drugs where many generic options are available;
• Ensured that doctors and pharmacists had useful materials on generics to share with patients.

The approach, said Jennifer Wilson Norton, Pharmacy Director of The Everett Clinic, validated the initial belief that quality care could be delivered with lower-cost generics. "Our results, whether measured by the Puget Sound Health Alliance Community Checkup or by our health plans, show we are performing significantly better across categories. Our performance extends into other drug classes as well, using the same approach.

"Overall, our generic use rate at The Everett Clinic is 80 percent, up from just 41 percent in 2001."

According to the Alliance, at some clinics only 15 percent of patients are on a generic statin to lower cholesterol, for instance.

"The little purple pill and other ads on TV can be very persuasive even though there are much more affordable medicines that work just as well for many people," said Diane Stollenwerk, Director of Communication for the Alliance.

To compare the rate at which certain prescriptions are filled with generics in King, Pierce, Snohomish, Thurston and Kitsap counties, go to www.WACommunityCheckup.org.

The Everett Clinic has learned some key lessons about how to promote generics and change old habits since it began in 1997. The effort to educate everybody in the organization must be on-going. The staff must have the right materials in order to communicate with patients. And it is essential that both clinicians and patients understand the fact that generics are often equally as good but much more

And the patients' response? So far, so good.

April Zepeda, The Everett Clinic's Media and Communications Manager, said "most of our patients are very appreciative of our focus on generics first. Our pharmacist and doctors talk to them about it ahead of time -and they are usually understanding and happy that we are taking measures to reduce medication co-pays and overall healthcare costs."

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The Puget Sound Health Alliance is a non- profit made up of those who provide, pay for and use health care, working together to improve quality of care at a price more people can afford. About 150 organizations participate in the Alliance, including Alaska Airlines, The Boeing Company, Starbucks, Puget Sound Energy, REI, the Washington State Health Care Authority, King County and many other employers, physician clinics, hospitals, consumer groups, unions and trusts, health plans, pharmaceutical companies and other organizations. For more information, visit www.pugetsoundhealthalliance.org. For an Alliance-produced report comparing local health care, go to www.WACommunityCheckup.org.

The Everett Clinic is a nationally recognized health care leader, providing many of the most highly trained physicians and advanced technologies available in the region. The large physician team of more than 300 doctors in 40 diverse specialties includes a majority of specialists who are fellowship trained. The Clinic has been recognized nationally with numerous grants and awards for providing high quality healthcare. For more information, go to www.everettclinic.com.