May 23, 2014

The Life Sciences consulting industry has always been subject to frequent and seismic changes. With the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act, and the slowness for new regulations and guidelines to be made clear, manufacturers and service providers are struggling to position themselves ahead of the curve. To help clients cope, Cumberland Consulting has brought on Amy VanDeCar as a senior principal to the practice. She brings to the table more than a dozen years of industry experience and will help lead the firm’s government programs practice as it braces for the new realities coming down the pike.

Consulting: What are some of the biggest challenges Life Sciences clients are facing?

VanDeCar: Companies are really seeking to make sure they have the appropriate systems in place and that they’re using them effectively to be able to look at large volumes of data so they ultimately can respond to changing market conditions. With my focus on government programs, a lot of the conversation is around change. We had healthcare reform legislation passed four years ago and we are still waiting for rules to come out to give manufacturers some guidance on what’s expected of them under these changed rules that have now been in effect for years. From a systems perspective, a lot of companies are really concerned about timing, and companies looking at implementations or significant upgrades are trying to look into a crystal ball and predict when we might get the regulation so they can incorporate that into their project plans. It’s difficult. So as companies are trying to go about their daily business, if they’re looking at system upgrades or implementations, it adds a layer of complexity.

Consulting: Is it your sense that companies are accepting that the ACA is here to stay, or are they still holding their breath for repeal?

VanDeCar: I think the provisions that have the largest financial impact on manufacturers are here to stay, I think that’s the general sense in industry. The nuances in how the actual healthcare portion of it continues to roll out, certainly there’s a lot of speculation that that could change or potentially go away entirely, the provisions in the legislation that manufacturers have already had to deal with really are financial. They’re paying more now in Medicaid rebates, they’re paying more in Medicare rebates that didn’t exist prior to 2011, so I think the sense in industry is there’s no incentive for the government to repeal provisions that have drug companies paying more money than they had before.

Read the full article here on Consulting Magazine’s website.

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