What drugs are we buying? Check out the new 46brooklyn State Utilization Dashboard!
Today, we are pleased to announce a new visualization tool that shows what prescription drugs that state Medicaid programs are purchasing. This new 46brooklyn State Utilization Dashboard will now provide an easy way to see the degree with which each prescription drug is being dispensed to Medicaid patients on a state-by-state basis.
This new dashboard will show unprecedented levels of detail in what state Medicaid programs are paying for. As taxpayers, we believe you deserve to know what you bought, and to also see how much you spent. There are a myriad of ways this new tool can be used, so hopefully you can use it to answer every question you ever (or never) had.
- Which state is spending the most on expensive brand-name drugs that have generic equivalents?
- Which states are paying for an inordinate amount of costly "combination drugs?"
- Which state is buying the greatest percentage of highly-addictive prescription drugs?
- Which state is investing the most in medication assisted treatment?
- Which states are purchasing the top 15 best-selling drugs from 2017?
We believe this tool has many stories to tell. Be warned though – using this dashboard will likely leave you with more questions than answers. We hope you enjoy venturing down the new rabbit hole that is the 46brooklyn State Utilization Dashboard.
In other news, we would like to give a special shout-out to the Ohio Department of Medicaid, who this week announced that they are revamping their pharmacy benefits contracts in their Medicaid managed care program to provide largely unprecedented levels of transparency in where the money goes on prescription drug transactions within the program.
Both of 46brooklyn's founders reside in Ohio and have been working directly with officials to shed light on the hidden dollars being lost in the middle of Medicaid pharmacy transactions. 46brooklyn was essentially born out of our growing inquiry (and frustration) with an increasingly complex, costly system.
Regardless of where you feel the money should go in the drug supply chain, we at 46brooklyn believe that we will never know how to spend our money more efficiently and effectively than we are currently doing today, unless there is full transparency.
We'd also like to give thanks to the team at the Columbus Dispatch for their ongoing investigative work (50+ stories and counting) into this issue. Read their special Side Effects series HERE. Also, be sure to have a look at Ed Silverman's piece in Pharmalot this week on the developments in Ohio (and a great plug for our site).