Free Market Health Gets Beeline RX to Simplify Professional Verification
Free Market Health, a technology company focused on specialty drugs, announced Tuesday that it has acquired RX, another company in the specialty drugs space.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based Free Market Health offers payers including Highmark to access professional drugstore markets of various sizes. Payers are able to choose the specialty drugstore in that market they want to have in the network. Freemarket Health can then connect that member to the best suitable pharmacies in the health program network when they are prescribed professional medications.
In contrast, the traditional way of payers managing specialty drugs is through exclusive relationships with a professional pharmacy.
Now, with the acquisition of Beeline RX, Free Market Health hopes to further simplify the professional pharmacy space, especially near previous authorizations. Because specialty drugs are so expensive, they usually require the payer's approval to obtain the drug. However, prior authorization often results in delays in patients.
Meanwhile, Beeline RX provides a platform to make this previous authorization process more efficient. It integrates with electronic health records and provides access to medical charts of 320 million patients. It also helps coordinate prescribers and professional pharmacies and provides access to medical policy and coverage guidelines. Freemarket Health will integrate this technology into its own platform.
“What [Beeline Rx] All built is centered around previous Auth and modernization approaches, leveraging data interoperability and the real practical use cases of AI. …Incorporating their technology into our care-driven marketplace is to provide an enhanced membership experience. In this case, it's a boost to some of the air inlet functions that Free Market Health already has,” said Joe Cardosi, founder and CEO of Free Market Health, in an interview.
The terms of the transaction are not disclosed.
Steve Fleck, co-founder and CEO of Beeline RX, will join Freemarket Health as Chief Strategy Officer, while Josh Cordle, co-founder and CEO, will serve as Chief Product Officer, and David Palmer, co-founder and COO, will serve as Senior Vice President of Operations.
“Beeline RX is committed to putting patients first – we are proud to be with [Free Market Health] “Team. We are not excited to unite and build innovative technologies together to ensure that the professional pharmacy ecosystem is responsible for patients who depend on it,” Fleck said in a statement.
The acquisition is due to the surge in costs of specialty drugs – they currently account for more than half of total drug spending. While Cardosi doesn’t want the professional drug space to become more complex, he believes that technical solutions like Free Market Health and Beeline RX will be able to help support the space.
“I think a modern technology company that aligns stakeholders, brings stakeholders closer and ultimately serving patients will be a key part of leveraging some of these to manage some of the complexity and dispersion,” he said.
Waltz Health is another company in the specialty pharmaceutical field, which provides a platform that connects health plan members to professional pharmacies that best suit their needs.
Photo: Megaflopp, Getty Images
