Formulary Optimization
Drug costs are rising. Unmanaged formularies make it worse.
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The Challenge
Health systems spend millions on medications each year, yet many operate without a formulary aligned with current clinical evidence, market pricing, or system-wide utilization patterns. Unwarranted variation across facilities, missed standardization opportunities, and drug costs that outpace reimbursement adjustments compound into a margin problem that is difficult to unwind without the right data and clinical alignment.
Having a formulary in place is not the same as managing one. Without pharmacist-led clinical review, provider-level utilization benchmarking, and a structured process for evaluating therapeutic alternatives, formulary management is reactive. It responds to shortages and cost spikes rather than proactively addressing them.
Why This Matters Now
- Drug costs continue to rise faster than most health systems can absorb through pricing or reimbursement adjustments
- Clinical variation across facilities and service lines compounds the financial impact of weak formulary governance
- Decentralized clinical services are expanding, creating new gaps between prescribing patterns and formulary design
- Pharmacy and Therapeutics (P&T) committees are under pressure to make faster, more defensible decisions with limited data support
How We Help
Acuvance Coker works alongside your pharmacy leadership and clinical teams to build and maintain a formulary that delivers measurable cost savings without compromising care quality. Our work includes:
- Cost-effective formulary standardization across facilities and service lines, supported by clinical evidence to drive physician alignment
- Pharmacist intervention dashboards and trend analysis to surface high-impact opportunities and track performance over time
- Decentralized clinical service evaluation to ensure formulary design reflects how care is delivered across your system
- Patient drug utilization benchmarking across your own providers and against peer health systems to identify where variation exists and what it costs
- Pharmacy and Therapeutics (P&T) committee support, including business case development and data-backed recommendations for leadership review and approval
What Makes Our Approach Different
Our pharmacy consultants understand the clinical rationale behind prescribing patterns. That means we can move conversations with physicians and P&T committees forward in ways that financially focused teams cannot. We can address both the inpatient and outpatient areas, addressing high-cost medications.
We work within your governance structure and stay engaged through implementation. Savings are realized, not just projected.
Because our pharmacy work is integrated across formularies throughout the health system, purchasing strategy, and 340B program positioning, the decisions we help you make connect to broader margin goals rather than sitting in isolation.
What You Gain
- Measurable drug cost reduction through evidence-based standardization and therapeutic substitution
- A formulary that reflects current clinical practice and is maintained over time, not just documented
- Provider- and facility-level visibility into utilization patterns and variation
- Stronger P&T committee processes, supported by data and structured business cases
- Alignment between pharmacy leadership, clinical teams, and finance around drug spend decisions
- A foundation for sustained formulary governance that scales with your system
Why Trust Coker
For more than three decades, Coker has been a trusted partner to healthcare leaders and investors, delivering clarity, compliance, and confidence through every stage of the transaction and beyond.
Positive outcomes are possible for you and your patients.
We approach every engagement with a results-driven mindset, leveraging our deep industry expertise and data-driven insights to develop strategies that drive meaningful, measurable improvements in performance.
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Solutions We Offer
We partner with clients to navigate the dynamic challenges of managing a high-performing physician enterprise.
