The Illinois Council of Health-System Pharmacists (ICHP) adopts the press release statement from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) regarding payer-mandated white bagging and applies this stance to brown-bagging, as well.
The ASHP press release statement dated March 2021 reads as follows:
"ASHP stands opposed to payer-mandated white bagging models that jeopardize optimal, safe, and effective medication use. It is ASHP's position that payer-mandated distribution models that require clinician-administered drugs to be dispensed exclusively via third-party specialty pharmacies are placing patients at risk and threaten to compromise organizations' well-established practices intended to ensure patient safety. Additionally, white bagging negatively impacts pharmacists' ability to validate medication integrity and maintain oversight of storage and handling. Further, by sidestepping well-established supply chain procedures, white bagging disrupts efforts to maintain adherence with protocols designed to ensure patient safety, quality, and continuity of care.
Health systems are committed to providing patients with the highest quality of collaborative multidisciplinary healthcare in an environment that enables swift and nimble selection of the most appropriate therapy at the correct dose. Unfortunately, increasingly frequent and restrictive payer-mandated white bagging of clinician-administered medications is unnecessarily threatening those commitments."
Definitions:
"White bagging" refers to the distribution of patient‐specific medication from a pharmacy, typically a specialty pharmacy, to the physician’s office, hospital, or clinic for administration. It is often used in oncology practices to obtain costly injectable or infusible medications that are distributed by specialty pharmacies and may not be available in all non‐specialty pharmacies.1
"Brown bagging" refers to the dispensing of a medication from a pharmacy (typically a specialty pharmacy) directly to a patient, who then transports the medication(s) to a healthcare facility for administration.1
References:
1. White and Brown Bagging Emerging Practices, Emerging Regulation. April 2018. NABP. https://nabp.pharmacy/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/White-Bagging-and-Brown-Bagging-Report-2018_Final.pdf
2. ASHP Statement 3/17/21: https://www.ashp.org/News/2021/03/18/ASHP-Stands-Opposed-to-Payer-Mandated-White-Bagging
Revised 1/2022