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.

:: 2010 ::


CRA ANNUAL MEETING
CRA 6th Annual Meeting
May 15th-16th, 2010
Omni Hotel, SF

For more information, registration, or direct access to hotel reservations click here.



Arthritis Foundation
44th Annual
Knowles Lecture
April 15, 2010
Concordia-Argonaut Club, SF
6:00-8:30 p.m.
For more information and to register click here

 

CRA Flyer 2006

March 2006

CRA Flyer - 2005

CRA Inaugural Meeting