Pharma brands invest heavily in sales and marketing tactics aimed at convincing physicians to prescribe their product. Even when successful, these efforts represent only a first step in realizing more prescriptions that actually get dispensed. Particularly when a prescription requires prior authorization (PA), retail pharmacy data shows that the originally prescribed product ends up being dispensed less than thirty percent of the time. In two-thirds of cases, the medication is either switched to another product or abandoned altogether, leaving both patients and physicians frustrated. PA requirements are being implemented by payers for more brands across most therapeutic categories, so the negative impact on pharma continues to deepen. Read the full article