The date January 1 can have varying meanings for people. It’s the first day of a new year, of course. For many, it represents a clean slate, an opportunity for resolutions and renewal. It might be parades and college football. It may simply be a day to recover from the revelry of the night before.
B. Douglas Hoey Beginning January 1, 2024, pharmacies may be dealing with a different pain: the DIR hangover. This is what we at the National Community Pharmacists Association have dubbed the period when bills for pharmacy direct and indirect remuneration for the end of 2023 will come due to pharmacy benefit managers just as DIR fees for the beginning of 2024 will be moved to the point of sale.
Transparent pharmacy payments will no longer include retroactive pharmacy DIR fees, which is good news. As I write this around Thanksgiving, however, the concern is that potentially lower DIR-less up-front payments to pharmacies combined with fourth quarter pharmacy DIR bills coming due could cause a double whammy on pharmacy cash flow in the first quarter of 2024 and possibly beyond.
For over a year, NCPA has been focusing on helping pharmacy teams prepare for the potential hangover headache and stay ahead of the game, and we’re staying locked in on our top priority: meaningfully Changing the Pharmacy Payment Model. From NCPA’s perspective, there are two main pillars to Changing the Pharmacy Payment Model. The first is getting paid fairly, predictably and transparently for the dispensing of prescription drugs.
Perverse PBM voodoo economics simply must come to an end. Independents have been saying this for years, but it’s apparent that we’re not the only ones feeling the effects of the middlemen’s malfeasance. It’s caught up with major pharmacy chains, many of which are cutting hours and shuttering stores. In fact, the closing of hundreds of chain pharmacies looks to be one of the major consumer health care storylines in 2024. This leaves Americans on both sides of the aisle looking for new pharmacies, and independent pharmacies often scrambling to rescue them.
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