Measuring Our Impact

When women can access affordable contraception, they can live their best and fullest lives. As part of our pioneering non-profit pharmaceutical business model, Medicines360 makes its product available at a  price substantially below the 340B ceiling price set by statute to clinics participating in the 340B Drug Pricing Program. A key component of measuring our impact is determining how this price affects equity, access, and cost.

Since April 2015, more than 220,000 units of our product have been distributed to 340B-enrolled clinics. Here’s what we know about the impact of those units:

• Medicines360 is improving equity in the marketplace: Women who use our product are twice as likely to be uninsured as users of other products in the same product category.^*
• Medicines360 is enabling access: An independent study published by Roth et al. retrospectively looked at electronic health records from seven Title X clinics in Utah.^** These sites reported that, after introducing Medicines360’s product, the percentage of patients choosing any of the products in the same product category increased.
• Medicines360 is creating cost savings for the public health system: We estimate that, by offering our product at a price substantially below the 340B ceiling price set by statute to qualifying public health centers in the U.S., we’ve saved the health system more than $57 million.^***

Moving forward, we’re undertaking new activities to measure our impact and identify remaining challenges to access. Here’s what we’re working on:

• In fall 2019, we distributed a nationwide survey to public sector clinics purchasing products using 340B pricing. We designed the survey to help understand how price affects the patients these clinics serve. For example, we asked clinics using our product whether it had enabled them to lower out-of-pocket costs for patients, increased their monthly number of product administrations, or expanded their range of services. We also asked clinics about challenges they still face.
• Our team has been conducting in-depth interviews with providers and administrators at clinics and networks offering our product. These interviewees provide insightful qualitative data that complement survey responses.
• Finally, we’ll be releasing data from a longitudinal study of public health centers that adopted our product. Specifically, this analysis looks at the change in likelihood that an uninsured woman would receive a product in our product category before and after their clinic introduced our product.
• Medicines360 is proud of our work to date, including the more than 220,000 units of our product that have been used by public health clinics. In part, our impact measurement work assesses how these units have affected clinics and the women they serve.

However, there is much work left to do. Our impact measurement helps us work towards closing the equity gap moving forward. Stay tuned as we learn and share more!