The UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy’s Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy student chapter took first place in the 2017 National Student Pharmacist Pharmacy & Therapeutics Competition, winning a $4,000 scholarship for the School. The competition took place on March 29 at the AMCP Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy Annual Meeting in Denver, and the team was presented with the award during the award ceremony the following day.
With a record 60 student chapters registering for the P&T competition, the School’s student chapter was one of eight finalist teams selected to participate in the national competition, the first year the team has advanced to the national level. The members of the winning team are team leader PY3 Claire Bugner and fellow PY3s Erin Brannick, Stephanie Salch and Steven Kiss.
Kristen Tripicchio, the president of the chapter and a Pharm.D. candidate at the School, said she credits the first-place finish with significant changes the chapter has made over the last two years, including for the last two years bringing in professionals from GlaxoSmithKline to help team members prepare for the competition.
The prep sessions were led by Richard Stanford, Pharm.D., a senior director of customer engagement, value evidence and outcomes at GSK and an adjunct assistant professor in the Division of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy at the School.
These prep sessions addressed how insurance companies decide to use managed-care techniques,” Tripicchio said. “Prior to the GSK prep sessions, there was no support system for the team to have the context for real-world applications, so they’re a huge help.”
She said this year’s prep sessions identified new topics to go over that were more tailored to the competition. One example is building economic models, which Chris Bell, M.S., of GSK helped train the students in as there is no course to help students prepare for that aspect of the competition. Joel Farley, Ph.D., a professor in the Division of Pharmaceutical Outcomes and Policy, has managed the P&T competition each year and has served as the faculty adviser since the AMCP chapter was formed. In addition to his help, the team also used feedback from the three judges of the local preliminary P&T competition who assisted in reviewing the students’ submissions.
Estay Greene, Pharm.D., from Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina and John Byrd, Ph.D., from GSK have been involved in the competition for a number of years and have helped the students improve the content and quality of their submissions. The two were joined on the judging panel this year by Ashley Pappas, Pharm.D., a clinical specialist and lead pharmacist with UNC Health Care and an adjunct assistant professor in the Division of Practice Advancement and Clinical Education.
“After winning the local competition last year but not being selected for nationals, we hoped to build off our success and be selected to compete as a finalist team at nationals,” Bugner said. “We were thrilled, to say the least, and were honored to have to opportunity to represent UNC for the first time in this competition.”
The competition provides student pharmacists with the opportunity to take part in managing the formulary process. With the assistance of their advisers and competition coordinators, each team worked through a case study involving a drug product dossier based on the AMCP Format for Formulary Submissions.
The drug for this year’s competition was Xeljanz, which is manufactured by Pfizer, Inc. and used to treat rheumatoid arthritis. The teams used the evidence available to them to present recommendations for formulary placement to a panel that represented a P&T committee.
After winning the local competition at the School, Bugner said she and the other team members dedicated themselves to the competition throughout December and January. The team divided up the work, which involved reading the manufacturer dossier, reading clinical trials associated with Xeljanz and other drugs used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, using evidence grading systems to evaluate the level of evidence that trials carried and looking into economic evaluations and cost-benefit analyses.
The students also developed a budget impact model to compare the published literature to the true effect they found that the drug would have on their pharmacy benefit manager. Overall, they developed three written submissions totaling over 30 pages, the economic model and a 25-minute PowerPoint presentation. The team found out in March that they were selected for the national competition.
“Because we advanced to nationals, we had to review our materials prior to competing in Denver,” Bugner said. “There were new drug approvals, new studies had come out, and we had to make sure we knew the most up-to-date information.”
The team was judged on their written materials, presentation and a Q&A session with the judges.
“Hearing our school called for first place was so rewarding and made the countless hours we dedicated to the competition worth it,” Bugner said. “Through this experience, we all learned more about managed care pharmacy and the complexities of formulary management.”
She also said the competition showed how far great teamwork could go.
“Our final submission to nationals was better than anything that one person could have done alone,” she said. “Our teamwork and support from faculty allowed us to achieve as much as we did.”
Tripicchio said she plans to have the team present to students interested in participating in the competition next year to help build momentum and get more people involved.
“We are incredibly proud of the four team members and are so excited for them to help build momentum for this competition in our school in the future,” she said.