California Department of Health Services : Its Efforts to Further Reduce Prescription Drug Costs Have Been Hindered by Its Inability to Hire More Pharmacists and Its Lack of Aggressiveness in Pursuing Available Cost-Saving Measures

Review of the Calif. Dept. of Health Services' (CDHS) practices for containing Med. Assist. Program (Medi-Cal) pharmaceutical costs. CDHS may not achieve the $104 million cost savings that it predicted for FY 2002-03 & 2003-04. CDHS's inability to generate the savings stems from a lack of pharmacists, a failure to consider fully the consequences of some of its planned activities, & a lack of reliable data to support its estimates. Further CDHS has not adopted certain techniques that other states use, such as disease mgmt. programs or targeting educ'l. efforts toward providers whose prescribing patterns are inappropriate. Finally, CDHS may be able to achieve additional savings of $80 million by eliminating optional pharmacy benefits.Howle, Elaine M. is the author of 'California Department of Health Services : Its Efforts to Further Reduce Prescription Drug Costs Have Been Hindered by Its Inability to Hire More Pharmacists and Its Lack of Aggressiveness in Pursuing Available Cost-Saving Measures', published 2003 under ISBN 9780756734961 and ISBN 0756734967.