SUNRx Named #1 on the Philadelphia 100

CHERRY HILL — SUNRx bills itself as the country's first proprietary prescription benefit administrative advocate. It can also bill itself as No. 1 on the Philadelphia 100. The Philadelphia 100 lists the fastest-growing independent and privately held companies in the region, a compilation sponsored by the Philadelphia Business Journal, the Wharton Small Business Development Center and the Entrepreneurs' Forum of Greater Philadelphia. "We're the anti-PBM [pharmacy benefit manager]," said Gerard Ferro, the company's founder and CEO. "We're a thorn in their side."
PBMs serve as middlemen between pharmacies and insurance carriers, employers or employee groups. To negotiate the best rates for their clients, they use purchasing power gained by buying large volumes of drugs from pharmaceutical manufacturers. SUNRx provides the same role but with a twist. We only bills clients an administrative fee that is fully disclosed in all contracts. "What the PBMs do is charge clients one price, pay the pharmacy another and create a spread," keeping the profit. "Our contracts disclose, in plain English, that the only source of revenue is the administrative fee. We don't keep rebates. We don't sell our list of client names to anybody," says Ferro
The PBM industry is under scrutiny, being questioning whether the savings they produce is being passed on to consumers and whether they are advocating the highest-quality prescriptions for their members. PBMs argue they don't disclose rebates and fees because it would have a negative impact on their negotiations with competing pharmaceutical companies. Ferro sees the situation differently. "They are not embracing transparency because you have to pull all the sheets back."
During Ferro’s 25 years in the health-care arena, he developed an auditing program to track pharmacy costs. This software is used in the services SUNRx provides to customers that encompass managed-care organizations, including Medicaid and Medicare plans, self-insured employers, insurance companies, unions, federal employees health benefit programs and other federal, state and local governmental entities. It also has a separate product that provides discount prescriptions at for individuals without pharmacy benefits.
SUNRx has a national retail pharmacy network with more than 60,000 pharmacies, including 22,000 where 90-day supplies of maintenance drugs can be filled with the same discounts. The company now has 27 clients with 400,000 covered lives. Ferro expects to be above 500,000 covered lives at the start of next year. Revenue for SUNRx has climbed from $600,000 in 2002, to $3 million in 2003 and $17.8 million last year.
Bill Kwasnicki, the legislative vice chairman and benefits integrity officer for the Correction Officers Benevolent Association of New York City, hired SUNRx two years ago. The association has 14,000 active and retired members. He said, last year SUNRx helped the association lower its prescription drug costs by $1.4 million, even though the number of prescriptions filled for its members increased. "We got a $127,000 rebate check from SUNRx and believe me, I am totally satisfied with SUNRx."