New Blues-Owned Drug Contracting Org Wants to Work With, Not Against Providers, CEO Says
A new venture founded by Blue Cross and Blue Shield affiliates, called the Synergie Medication Collective, aims to improve affordability and access to drugs covered under the medical benefit — a category that includes cancer medications and cell/gene therapies. Synergie’s chief executive says the goal isn’t to disrupt the current distribution system for clinically administered drugs, but rather to leverage the Blues’ size and bargaining power to scale up innovations like outcomes-based contracting for some of the country’s priciest drugs.
“We’re basically a medical contracting organization,” Synergie CEO Jerrod Henshaw tells AIS Health, a division of MMIT. “And by that, I mean we’re not going to be buying and billing like a Vizient or a HealthTrust and displacing any of that. We’re not going to be in the distribution channel.”
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