Evergreen
Re Acquires Stanton Group Pharmacy Unit
One of the country's top pharmacy consulting groups to lead
Evergreen Rx team
Stuart,
FL - June 2, 2004
-- Evergreen Re, a national healthcare reinsurance and medical
risk brokerage firm, announced this week it has acquired the pharmacy
practice of Stanton Group and will name its new division Evergreen
Rx. The move will further strengthen the firm's ability to provide
products and services to help health plans, insurers, large employers
and unions manage their medical and prescription drug expenses.
Ken
Dowell, former pharmacy benefits practice leader of Stanton Group,
will serve as Pharmacy Practice Leader of Evergreen Rx, and Linda
"Dee-Dee" Tillitt, former manager of the Stanton Group
pharmacy division will serve as Pharmacy Operations Manager. Both
will be based in Minneapolis.
Dowell,
who has more than 15 years experience working with some of the
country's largest Pharmacy Benefit Management (PBM) firms, brings
to Evergreen Rx a proprietary analytical process designed to evaluate
and better manage the cost side of the retail pharmacy benefit.
The
PharmaAssist analytical tools serve to evaluate a client's current
PBM, compare it with other plans, as well as review contract compliance
and billing errors. This PBM vendor management process has proven
to save 5% or more of gross pharmacy costs and has become
a powerful negotiating tool at PBM renewal time.
"Our
clients continue to tell us that managing pharmacy costs is a
major concern," said Charles Crispin, President and CEO of
Evergreen Re. "While most do an excellent job of managing
the clinical side of pharmacy benefits, we now have a strategic
process and experts in place to help them analyze, monitor and
manage the business side of the prescription drug risk and generate
substantial costs savings."
Randy
Herman, Chairman of Evergreen Re, adds, "The timing for expanding
our pharmacy management services could not have been better. As
the pharmacy industry grows more complex, fueled recently by Medicare
changes and the shifting of specialty pharmaceuticals to traditional
PBMs, payers will need additional resources to manage this critical
benefit."
According
to Dowell, the pharmacy spend in the U.S. was $192 billion in
2003 and that number is expected to double in the next five years.
Additionally, Pharmacy Benefit Management companies now control
more than 70 per cent of all consumer prescription drug purchases,
or more than $100 billion dollars.
"Many
health plans and self insured employers have instituted high pharmacy
deductibles to mitigate the impact of the double-digit increases
in drug costs. While this has resulted in effective cost shifting,
it does not address the real problem of increased overall costs
that will eventually return. Our analysis addresses multiple factors
that will help arrest gross trend and create a more stable environment
for our clients," Dowell said.
Stanton
Group, founded in 1953 and based in Minneapolis, provides a full
range of employee benefits and compensation services to over 1,400
clients and 300,000 employees nationwide.
Evergreen
Re is a healthcare consulting firm providing reinsurance brokerage
services and other risk reduction products and services that improve
predictability and financial performance for health plans, provider
organizations, large employers, unions and business coalitions.
The company provides risk protection and reinsurance programs
for clients with members in more than 45 states. Evergreen Re
has offices in Alabama, Florida, Illinois, Minnesota, Pennsylvania
and Virginia. For more information contact Ken Dowell at 952-886-7167,
email to kdowell@evergreenre.com or visit our website at www.evergreenre.com.
