Healthcare Bluebook Launches Bluebook Rx

Healthcare Bluebook has launched Bluebook Rx, a new solution that helps employers and health plan sponsors better understand and optimize their prescription drug spending. Bluebook Rx is fully integrated into Healthcare Bluebook’s existing quality and cost navigation solution.

Bluebook Rx analyzes pharmacy claims data to identify overpriced medications and guides members toward clinically effective, lower-cost alternatives. Members have access to personalized savings reports and a concierge service, including access to Bluebook's licensed pharmaceutical team, to help guide their decisions.

This solution provides employers with an independent look at their pharmacy expenditure, and where there are opportunities to do better in terms of both quality and clinical efficacy and the actual economic consequence, Bill Kampine, cofounder and chief innovation officer of Healthcare Bluebook, said in an interview.

“There is an opportunity to lower employers’ costs given the contract and given the benefit design, and given the formulary they currently have,” he said. “We provide them with the power to educate consumers and help them to lower their own out-of-pocket costs on their medications, lowering both the cost for the member and the overall cost for the plan.”

Officials at Bluebook assess an employer’s contract and claims data and list prices to assess prices. Bluebook also has pharmacy and therapeutics (P&T) committee that maintains evidence-based medicine and evaluates clinical efficacy.

“Our economists create the intersection of clinical efficacy and the price component to enable consumers to get better value out of the health care system,” Kampine said.

Kampine said Bluebook Rx is complementary to the services offered by PBMs.

“This is an extremely low-friction solution that is about empowering the members and helping them be aware of what choices they have within their pharmacy benefits specific to the medications they’re taking, and helping to empower that member to make better choices for more cost-effective medication,” Samantha McMaster, senior director of pharmacy solutions, Healthcare Bluebook, said in an interview.

Healthcare Bluebook uses quality and price data and claims-driven ROI reporting to deliver health care value insights to consumers, employers, and health care providers and payers. In February 2021, the Nashville company acquired the quality division of Quantros, a provider of quality analytics software for health care providers and payers. The Quantros quality business leverages a range of powerful data sources to provide insights into the quality performance of hospitals, health systems, payers, data aggregators and healthcare providers nationwide. The Quantros data is validated against federal and commercial claims data, as well as Bluebook's own data.