By the time a member of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas inquired about covering a new prescription gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) last spring, the pharmacy management team had been well prepared.
In fact, the team had been planning for gene therapy requests since late 2017 with the approval of voretigene neparvovec-rzyl (Luxturna, Spark), said Kenneth Mishler, PharmD, MBA, the insurer’s chief pharmacist, even though they had no members with retinal eye