February 9, 2023 – When Lawton Burns, Ph.D., MBA, looked at the literature available for the U.S. healthcare system, he saw a large gap in information and education about group purchasing organizations (GPOs) and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs).
“I’ll give you an illustration of how frustrating this can be,” said Dr. Burns, professor of Health Care Management at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. “Everybody who talks about the history of GPOs starts with the formation of the Hospital Bureau in 1910. Then they jump to the present day – and miss what happened in the last 110+ years. There is a total gap in everybody’s understanding. I like to tell my students that the only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.”
Dr. Burns said a good chunk of his recently released book, “The Healthcare Value Chain: Demystifying the Role of GPOs and PBMs,” is the history of GPOs and PBMS that nobody knows. In an interview with The Journal of Healthcare Contracting, Dr. Burns discussed some misconceptions about GPOs and PBMs, and the importance of these two entities in today’s healthcare supply chain.
Read more in the latest issue of The Journal of Healthcare Contracting.