PBMI Releases Customer Satisfaction Data on Pharmacy Benefit Managers

SCOTTSDALE, AZ--(Marketwire - January 21, 2010) - The Pharmacy Benefit Management Institute's "2009 Pharmacy Benefit Manager Customer Satisfaction Report" features new employer ratings on transparency, RFP processes, customer loyalty and specialty pharmacy. A total of 358 U.S. employers representing 17.2 million members provide actionable feedback on the service performance of their pharmacy benefit management (PBM) vendors in 17 areas.

The annual PBMI report shows employer perceptions of PBM performance are consistently positive. The trend line for employer satisfaction shows little change compared to prior years. Using a 10-point scale with 10 equal to the highest level of satisfaction, employers rated PBMs with an average "overall service and performance" rating of 7.6.

PBMI data document the correlation of employers' level of satisfaction with financial transparency to their service ratings on PBM performance. The 26.6 percent of employers who are extremely satisfied with the level of financial transparency gave their PBMs significantly higher ratings than those employers who are less satisfied.

"Goal alignment and increased degrees of perceived financial transparency in the employer-PBM relationship engender high ratings on overall customer satisfaction ratings," says PBMI President Dana H. Felthouse, MBA. "The aspect of the business relationship with the greatest bearing on the business relationship is financial transparency."

Nearly one-fourth of employers indicated that they were involved in a procurement process during the past six months, qualifying them to rate satisfaction with four attributes of the request for proposal (RFP) process. While employers rated their satisfaction with "responsiveness to RFP questions" high at 8.3, they indicated a level of dissatisfaction with "clarity of contract language" at a comparatively lower 7.4.

Specialty pharmacy is a growing portion of pharmacy benefit strategy for many employers. Eighty-one percent of employers rated PBM performance on four specialty pharmacy management activities from 7.2 to 7.8. Despite these ratings, specialty pharmacy correlates less to a PBM's "overall service and performance" rating than many administrative functions including "account management" and "member service."

The "2009 Pharmacy Benefit Management Report" is available in electronic and print formats. The newly designed, four-color report includes profiles of 14 PBMs.

The Pharmacy Benefit Management Institute provides research and continuing education to help health care benefit executives work effectively with pharmacy benefit managers to improve the design and management of drug benefit programs. For PBMI news, visit www.pbmi.com/news-releases.asp.

Contact Information: Contact: Maggie Bruce (480) 730-0814 Cell: (602) 318-5003 Email: