Barrett Toan To Speak At PBMI Spring Conference

Barrett Toan who was the motivating force behind building Express Scripts has been gone for since 2006 when he stepped down as Chairman of the board.  He is now the chairman of Sigma Aldrich here in St. Louis and active in other pursuits.  I was excited yesterday when I heard from Brenda Motheral, the Executive Director at PBMI, that Barrett had agreed to speak at their conference (register here). 

While I never got to work with Barrett as closely as I would have liked to, I was on several projects with him.  I was always amazed by both his passion for the industry and the patient along with his ability to move from both the macro-vision to digging down into the details.  It should be fascinating to hear his view on where the industry is today and all the changes that have happened.

And, that should add to the agenda they already have which includes Gilbert Welch, the author of Overdiagnosed, Kjel Johnson from Magellan, Stacy Dow from Whirlpool, and Dr. Troy Brennan from CVS Caremark. 

The focus of the agenda this year is on specialty which is obviously front and center for all of us.  The one concern that I have had in the past was around attendee mix.  It always seemed like the PBMs talking to each other, but Brenda told me that so far ~75% of the registrants are plan sponsors and that the actual number of plan sponsors registered already exceeds last year.  This would be a big and very positive change. 

Brenda also mentioned several other key topics – 340B, MTM, eRx, generics, consumerism, OTC, and Rx and Dx integration.  Of course, I’m sure there will be discussion from their survey which I reviewed earlier, and they will be releasing their new specialty survey at the event.  I’m planning to attend, and I hope to see you there.