Press Release
FutureScripts Promotes Paul Urick to Senior Vice President to Lead the Pharmacy Benefit Management Operation
Strong leadership key to long-term cost savings for customers
Philadelphia, PA - February 11, 2008 — FutureScripts President Christopher D. Butler has announced the promotion of Paul N. Urick, R.Ph., to senior vice president of FutureScripts®, LLC, a pharmacy benefits management company headquartered in Philadelphia. Urick was hired to build FutureScripts and now oversees all operations of the company.
Urick’s team at FutureScripts manages prescription drug benefits for more than 1.3 million plan participants with an annual drug spend of more than $1 billion. FutureScripts offers a full array of pharmacy management services, including formulary development and management, pharmaceutical contracting, claims processing, and a national network of more than 60,000 retail and specialty pharmacies.
Before this promotion Urick served as vice president of pharmacy services. Previously, Urick was vice president for pharmacy programs at Geisinger Health Plan in Danville, Pennsylvania, where he oversaw the plan’s pharmacy benefit management services, including a pharmacy mail-order facility. Urick began his career at Geisinger Medical Center as a clinical pharmacist.
Urick received his pharmacy degree from the University of Sciences in Philadelphia. He is a member of the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) and is a past chapter president of the Pennsylvania Society of Health System Pharmacists.
FutureScripts first began operations on October 1, 2006, handling the administration of prescription drug benefits for employer groups and health plans. Currently, FutureScripts provides its services to all Independence Blue Cross (IBC) companies with plans to expand in the marketplace in the future. FutureScripts’ key accounts include major school systems, corporations, and labor unions in southeastern Pennsylvania. In its first year of business FutureScripts processed more than 15 million pharmacy claims. Continuing to grow, FutureScripts has more than 100 employees, including pharmacists and other business associates, and is currently hiring for key talent positions.
When developing FutureScripts, the goal was to build a cost-saving prescription solution to help customers manage rising prescription drug costs without sacrificing quality. FutureScripts’ approach to managing prescription drug benefits is expected to provide close to $100 million in savings to IBC’s group customers over a five-year period.
“More than 22 cents of each health care dollar spent in our region goes toward the cost of prescription drugs,” said Butler, president of FutureScripts. “We share our customers’ increasing concern about the rising cost of staying healthy, and we are pleased at how effectively FutureScripts is helping to drive down costs for our customers.”
Butler explained that FutureScripts reduced increases in pharmacy costs for IBC customers by 2.3 percent in 2007 — despite the increase in medications taken by plan participants as they age and the introduction of new, more costly drugs with national advertising campaigns aimed directly at consumers.
In a major effort to raise awareness about and use of generic drugs, FutureScripts managed one of the industry’s most innovative pharmaceutical programs, IBC’s No Pay Copay. This initiative waived copays for generic prescription drugs for IBC pharmacy members during 2007. No Pay Copay proved highly successful, with 87 percent of plan participants surveyed reporting that they will continue to ask their doctors for generic prescriptions after No Pay Copay ended, and three-quarters believe generics are as safe and as effective as their brand-name counterparts.
FutureScripts is a pharmacy benefits management company headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that helps employers and health plans manage rising prescription drug costs without sacrificing quality coverage. FutureScripts has built a comprehensive national pharmacy network of more than 60,000 retail pharmacies, including independent pharmacies as well as all of the major pharmacy retail chains. For more information, call FutureScripts corporate headquarters at 1-888-678-7012.