Payer-manufacturer collaboration – a sequel

by Torsten Bernewitz

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Yesterday we saw another example of payers and pharmaceutical manufacturers collaborating in new ways. The bug of creating new partnerships seems to be catching on as the different healthcare stakeholders realize that each of them are holding different pieces of the healthcare puzzle, and that they can really solve it only by putting them together in joint efforts.

Now it’s Pfizer partnering with prescription benefits manager Medco (http://www.thestreet.com/story/11289938/1/pfizer-establishes-precision-medicine-research-collaboration-with-medco.html).

Sanofi entered a similar collaboration with Medco in the summer, and of course a few days ago we had Pfizer-Humana and earlier in the year AstraZeneca-WellPoint. I shared more details about these examples in an earlier post (http://payer-strategies.blogspot.com/2011/10/adversaries-becoming-friends-payers-and.html).


And on the provider-payer side there is also a lot more love (http://payer-strategies.blogspot.com/2011/10/love-is-in-air-take-aways-from-ahip.html).

Interesting times!

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Torsten Bernewitz is a healthcare industry analyst and management consultant.
He is Managing Principal, Healthcare Insurers and Payers at ZS Associates.

This post is the author’s own and does not necessarily represent ZS Associates’ positions, strategies or opinions.

Contact: torsten.bernewitz@zsassociates.com