COMING SOON...

CRA Position Paper on Approved Medical Therapies

Access to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved and medically necessary prescription therapies for Californians enrolled in health insurance pharmacy benefit programs should not be limited. There is no justification for Insurers to establish independent policies that dictate therapies for medical care or for Insurers to micromanage care beyond that which has already been established by federal regulatory agencies and/or accepted as the standard of care by physicians in California communities.

It is the position of the CRA that every effort should be made to identify situations in rheumatology where third party payer interference may result in deviations from standards of care and that the CRA should act to reverse such policies. Moreover, we assert that in such cases where an Insurer dictates rheumatology therapies in defiance of regulatory guidelines, this action is both illegal, unethical and, most importantly, it is not in the best interest of the patients.
Those Insurance agencies that attempt to establish rules for patient access to rheumatology care, often based on their own Pharmacy & Therapeutic committee recommendations, are willfully choosing to ignore guidelines established by the FDA. They are also ignoring standards of care as determined by practicing rheumatologists in the community. Insurance policies that are so contrived appear suspiciously self-serving with the ultimate goal of cost-containment rather than procurement of quality patient care.

The mission statement of the CRA is Advocacy for Patient Access to Rheumatology Care. To this end, the CRA will work to identify and expose those insurance programs that defy FDA guidelines, ignore established standards in rheumatology care and that improperly promote the corporate practice of medicine to the detriment of our patients.

:: 2008 ::

ACR Annual Conference
October 25-28, 2008
San Francisco, California

CRA Meeting at ACR
October 26, 2008
San Francisco, California
Moscone Center - Room 250
4:30 - 6:30 p.m.


:: 2009 ::

CSRO Fellows Conference
February 28-29, 2009
Stanford Court Hotel
San Francisco, California

For more information click here.

CRA Annual Meeting
May 15-17, 2009
Omni Hotel
Los Angeles, California

EULAR Congress
June 10-13, 2009
Copenhagen, Denmark

ACR Annual Meeting
October 16-21, 2009
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

 

CRA Flyer 2006

March 2006

CRA Flyer - 2005

CRA Inaugural Meeting