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news.In what represents good news for patients but bad news for Merck & Co, US pharmaceutical benefit manager PharmaCare claims to have successfully shifted nearly 95% of its members utilizing Zocor, the worlds' second largest-selling cholesterol drug, to new generic simvastatin.
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PharmaCare, a wholly-owned subsidiary of America’s largest retail pharmacy CVS Corporation, said it credits this significant shift to several factors, including the aggressive roll-out of the company’s patient-centric programs PatientAlert and GENesis. These programs are designed to encourage patients to shift from brand-name therapies to their cheaper generic equivalents
PharmaCare also cited automated generic substitution through mail service for patients who authorize the process and timely communication to the company’s national network of more than 56,800 pharmacies to ensure they were ready to fill scripts as soon as generic simvastatin became available.
“Shifting members to a generic as quickly as possible is critical to saving our patients and clients money,” said Greg Weishar, president and CEO of PharmaCare. The company also said that projected savings, which currently stand at 25%, should increase throughout 2007 as additional simvastatin competitors emerge.
However, this is clearly bad news for the branded drug. PharmaCare now estimates that its market share for Zocor will continue to decline to less than 0.5%.