Easton, the Co-Founder and Chief Sales Officer of the technology-enabled pharmacy benefit management consulting company Confidio (now part of RxBenefits), is firmly on the side of consumers and employers and has been in support of regional health plans which typically offer more value and better outcomes than the big national health insurance providers.
A consistent member of the coveted Inc. 5000 List of Fastest-Growing U.S. Companies, RxBenefits delivers a full suite of pharmacy benefit procurement, consulting, audit, and analytic services designed to further enhance the value of prescription drug plans offered by mid-market employers and plan sponsors.
The company’s sophisticated analytics platform compares plan sponsor drug spend against its own leveraged pharmacy benefit management (PBM) contracts to identify savings opportunities from a financial and clinical management perspective. RxBenefits also validates operational performance ensuring self-funded employers and health plans minimize drug spending while optimizing patient care.
The numbers add up for RxBenefits.
Under Easton’s leadership, RxBenefits has become a critical cost management component for its clients, an aggregate of over 500 self-funded plan sponsors representing more than 600,000 members by using its collective as leverage for negotiating prices with pharmacy benefit managers and alternative service providers in the pharmacy benefit management space.
“Pharmacy is a numbers game – lives, prescriptions filled and drug spend. A 100-member group simply doesn’t have much leverage compared to a 10,000-life self-insured plan sponsor. So, the ability to aggregate the lives that we manage gives us leverage that benefits both our clients and ultimately their health plan members,” Easton said.
In the past, only Blue Cross, United, Cigna & Aetna (collectively known as the BUCA’s), the country’s largest employers, and national purchasing coalitions had significant leverage to negotiate prescription drug pricing and rebates from PBMs successfully.
A strategic investment to help take on the BUCA’s.
Central to RxBenefits’s plan to take on the BUCA’s is a strategic investment in fellow healthcare-industry disrupter Stonebrook Risk.
A Los Angeles-based startup, Stonebrook is creating a national network of regional health plans. The combined network serves middle-market employers and stretches beyond the geographic boundaries of their existing provider networks. Using its proprietary digital platform, Total Value Analytics™(STVA), Stonebrook does a deep dive into the finances of regional plans, calculating the total cost of care. By aggregating these data points, Stonebrook aligns risk among multiple non-competing regional plans to operate within the same risk-adjustment environment.
By creating the first nationwide network of best-in-class regional health plans, Stonebrook gives consumers a real alternative to corporate healthcare conglomerates.
“We have been producing big wins for clients and their plan members for the last decade,” said Easton. “Stonebrook is central to our ability to continue serving the market at scale for an even greater number of small to mid-market, self-funded companies.”