The US Department of Defense (DOD) offers health care coverage through its TRICARE program. DOD contracts with managed care support contractors to provide medical services, and separately with a pharmacy benefit manager to provide pharmacy services that include the TRICARE mail-order pharmacy and access to a retail pharmacy network. Its current contract for the management of pharmaceutical benefits expires in the fall of 2014 and DOD has already started planning the next stage of procurement.
According to the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report of 30 September 2013,
During acquisition planning for the upcoming TRICARE pharmacy services contract, DOD solicited feedback from industry through its market research process to align the contract requirements with industry best practices and promote competition. For example, DOD issued requests for information (RFI) in which DOD asked questions about specific market trends, such as ensuring that certain categories of drugs are distributed through the most cost-effective mechanism. DOD also issued an RFI to obtain information on promoting competition, asking industry for opinions on the length of the contract period. DOD officials told [GAO] that responses indicated that potential offerors would prefer a longer contract period because it would allow a new contractor more time to recover any capital investment made in implementing the contract. The request for proposals for the upcoming contract, issued in June 2013, included a contract period of 1 base year and 7 option years. DOD also identified changes to contract requirements in response to legislative changes to the TRICARE pharmacy benefit. For example, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2013 required DOD to implement a mail-order pilot for maintenance drugs for beneficiaries who are also enrolled in Medicare Part B. DOD officials incorporated this change in the requirements for the upcoming pharmacy services contract.
At first sight, this looks like a proper exercise of procurement planning and one that is specifically concerned with promoting effective competition in the next stage of pharmaceutical benefits management procurement. However, GAO has very high standards and considers that the exercise carried out by DOD is insufficient and that the Department needs to think outside of the box (of the current structure of benefit management contracts) to see if an even better scenario is achievable. In that regard, GAO considers that
DOD has not conducted an assessment of the appropriateness of its current pharmacy services contract structure that includes an evaluation of the costs and benefits of alternative structures. Alternative structures can include incorporating all pharmacy services into the managed care support contracts—a carve-in structure—or a structure that incorporates certain components of DOD’s pharmacy services, such as the mail-order pharmacy, into the managed care support contracts while maintaining a separate contract for other components. DOD officials told GAO they believe that DOD’s current carve-out contract structure continues to be appropriate, as it affords more control over pharmacy data that allows for detailed data analyses and cost transparency, meets program goals, and has high beneficiary satisfaction. However, there have been significant changes in the pharmacy benefit management market in the past decade, including mergers and companies offering new services that may change the services and options available to DOD. GAO has previously reported that sound acquisition planning includes an assessment of lessons learned to identify improvements. Additionally, GAO has reported that a comparative evaluation of the costs and benefits of alternatives can provide an evidence-based rationale for why an agency has chosen a particular alternative. Without this type of evaluation, DOD cannot effectively demonstrate that it has chosen the most appropriate contract structure in terms of costs to the government and services for beneficiaries.
DOD is now required to conduct an evaluation of the potential costs and benefits of alternative structures for the TRICARE pharmacy services contract, and incorporate such an evaluation into acquisition planning. GAO will report again once this additional exercise is completed.
In my view, this case shows how important it is to develop effective and demanding standards of market investigation and procurement planning in order for contracting authorities to reap all the benefits of effective market competition. It may well be that the result of the enquiry shows that current structures are the most efficient. But, even in that case, the additional market research would not have been an sterile exercise. By avoiding path dependency and seeking for alternative modes of provision (ie by actually knowing the markets where they contract from), contracting authorities can obtain true value for money.
Hence, this type of mandatory market intelligence should be seen as best practice and, in my opinion, imported into the procurement systems of many European countries (and, definitely, Spain). Only in that way will public procurement really contribute to smart growth and be truly aligned with the Europe 2020 strategy. Hopefully the revision of the domestic procurement systems as a part of the process for the transposition of the soon to be adopted new EU rules on procurement will offer Member States an opportunity to also reflect on these issues and to strengthen their market intelligence requirements and infrastructures.
