Medication Talk: Biosimilars in Action

Medication Talk: Biosimilars in Action

Listen in as we discuss considerations, challenges, and strategies related to the use and switching of biosimilars in clinical practice.  You’ll hear communication tips to address patient and prescriber concerns as well as operational considerations for integrating biosimilars into practice.

Special guests:

  • Bharati Bhardwaja, PharmD, BCPS, LSSBB
    • Rheumatology Clinical Pharmacy Specialist
    • Kaiser Permanente Colorado
  • Megan May, PharmD, BCOP, FHOPA, FAPO
    • Clinical Oncology Pharmacy Specialist
    • Baptist Health Lexington/Hamburg Cancer Care Center

You’ll also hear practical advice from TRC’s Editorial Advisory Board member:

  • Craig D. Williams, PharmD, FNLA, BCPS
    • Clinical Professor of Pharmacy Practice
    • Oregon Health and Science University

For the purposes of disclosure, Dr. Megan May reports relevant financial relationships [lung cancer] with Amgen, AstraZeneca, Pharmacosmos (speakers bureau). The other speakers have nothing to disclose.  All relevant financial relationships have been mitigated.

This podcast is an excerpt from one of TRC’s monthly live CE webinars, the full webinar originally aired in August 2025.

TRC Healthcare offers CE credit for this podcast. Log in to your Pharmacist’s Letter, Pharmacy Technician’s Letter, or Prescriber Insights account and look for the title of this podcast in the list of available CE courses.

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Transcript:

This transcript is automatically generated.

00:00:07 Bharati Bhardwaja

The way that he presents it to patients is that you know you have your recipe from Kentucky Fried Chicken on their fried chicken recipe. And then you have your recipe from Popeyes Fried Chicken.

00:00:18 Bharati Bhardwaja

They’re both fried chicken. They have subtle differences, but they’re essentially pretty much the same.

00:00:24 Megan May

So, the provider just has to pick the treatment plan and then our EMR automatically picks what is most cost effective for the patient and for the healthcare system.

00:00:37 Megan May

That was a huge win for us when we were able to utilize technology in order to help make these decisions.

00:00:48 Narrator

Welcome to Medication Talk, an official podcast of TRC Healthcare, home of Pharmacist’s LetterPrescriber Insights, and the most trusted clinical resources.

00:00:58 Narrator

Proud to be celebrating 40 years of unbiased evidence and recommendations.

00:01:03 Narrator

On this episode, listen in as our expert panel discusses considerations, challenges, and strategies related to the use and switching of biosimilars in clinical practice.

00:01:14 Narrator

You’ll hear communication tips to address patient and prescriber concerns… as well as operational considerations for integrating biosimilars into practice.

00:01:23 Narrator

Our guests today are both clinical specialty pharmacists…

00:01:27 Narrator

Dr. Bharati Bhardwaja from Kaiser Permanente Colorado and Dr. Megan May from the Baptist Health Lexington/Hamburg Cancer Care Center.

00:01:36 Narrator

You’ll also hear practical advice from TRC’s Editorial Advisory Board member Dr. Craig Williams from the Oregon Health and Science University.

00:01:44 Narrator

This podcast is an excerpt from one of TRC’s monthly live CE webinars.

00:01:49 Narrator

Each month, experts and frontline providers discuss and debate challenges in practice, evidence-based practice recommendations, and other topics relevant to our subscribers.

00:02:00 CE Narrator

And now the CE information.

00:02:04 Narrator

This podcast offers Continuing Education credit for pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, physicians, and nurses.

00:02:11 Narrator

Please log in to your Pharmacist’s Letter, Pharmacy Technician’s Letter, or Prescriber Insights account and look for the title of this podcast in the list of available CE courses.

00:02:21 Narrator

For the purposes of disclosure… Dr. May reports a relevant financial relationship by serving on speaker’s bureau for lung cancer with Amgen, AstraZeneca, and Pharmacosmos.

00:02:31 Narrator

The other speakers you’ll hear have nothing to disclose. All relevant financial relationships have been mitigated.

00:02:40 Narrator

Now, let’s join TRC Editors, doctors Stephen Small and Sara Klockars, and start our discussion!

00:02:48 Stephen Small

So, to start off with Bharati, what factors should be considered before using or switching to a biosimilar?

00:02:56 Bharati Bhardwaja

Yeah, there are a lot of factors to consider. I think both from the perspective of the dispensing pharmacy.

00:03:05 Bharati Bhardwaja

But also at an organizational level. But I think what’s key to start is building trust, whether it’s the prescriber pharmacist or at the patient level, really kind of communicating assurance that the biosimilar is safe and effective as the reference biologic.

00:03:21 Bharati Bhardwaja

Some other considerations to factor in when switching to a biosimilar are of course the state.

00:03:27 Bharati Bhardwaja

Laws around interchangeability of biosimilars, any institution policies on switching biosimilars, as well as payer coverage.

00:03:37 Bharati Bhardwaja

And then I just wanted to bring up a quick comment that you know, even at the patient perspective level, there’s still some hesitation around switching from a reference biologic to a biosimilar.

00:03:50 Bharati Bhardwaja

And I think for patients, especially in the rheumatology patient population.

00:03:54 Bharati Bhardwaja

And there’s a lot of this sense of emotional attachment, especially when the patient has been on a biologic for many years and say, for example, the rheumatoid arthritis has been in remission, free of flares and disease activity and so providing assurance to the patient again that it’s similar in efficacy.

00:04:16 Bharati Bhardwaja

You know, factoring and change management as well for providers so that they understand the reasons behind both clinically as well as from an affordable standpoint that we do have good evidence supporting the switch and good evidence for biosimilar. So providing as much education.

00:04:35 Bharati Bhardwaja

Data firm, I think, is important for these similar switches.

00:04:40 Megan May

One thing I was going to say that’s a little different in our oncology population for the most part, we don’t typically switch from the reference product to a biosimilar for our patients. They’re usually started on one or the other. And so I haven’t had the same experience because I haven’t started a patients on the reference product and then.

00:05:00 Megan May

The switch and that’s because most of our patients unfortunately are not on the same product for long term like what we see in rheumatology. So for my patients, I agree patient education is extremely important and I usually get really good buy in from our patients because we’re not making a change in the middle of that treatment algorithm.

00:05:23 Craig Williams

Yeah, I just reiterate to what Marty said, Steve, that remembering where the patients at since certain their attachment to that medication, if you had horrible psoriatic arthritis and this drug has kept you in remission, this is the time I think using the term generic does not necessarily help and explaining what a biosimilar is and the and what that it is for that.

00:05:43 Craig Williams

Biosimilar because in those chronic conditions mean the switch as we discussed can sometimes be very helpful to the patients pocketbook as well as the systems having a discussion of of what the drug really is. And and I do not really use the term generic.

00:05:57 Craig Williams

In that setting, just because it, yeah, it’s you do have to be empathetic to the patient who’s associating this drug with perhaps a very good disease response and then they get understandably very nervous about a switch to something we’re calling a generic, especially the switch is going on at the pharmacy outside the prescriber’s office.

00:06:16 Stephen Small

We’re actually getting a question right now from the audience, which patients should avoid using a biosimilar based on what we’ve said so far, are there any thoughts to add to that?

00:06:26 Megan May

Really, most patients can get a biosimilar, things that come to mind if a patient has a hypersensitivity reaction, for example, to the reference product and it has the same active and inactive ingredients as the biosimilar, that might not be a good option just to switch to the biosimilar.

00:06:45 Megan May

The other thing to remember, if a patient does not have an efficacious response to either the reference product or the biosimilar. You don’t really switch to the other in order to see if you get a better response.

00:06:59 Megan May

So it’s just important to remember, like we said, they’re highly similar in safety, purity and potency, but we don’t want to switch between one and the other just to try to get better efficacy. That’s not how we use biosimilars.

00:07:16 Craig Williams

I think who should avoid about summer if it’s an initial therapy? I think as you’re hearing, no one’s biosimilar is certainly fair to start. That’s not something to switch to if you think it’s going to be safer or more effective. Yeah, no one comes to mind as someone who shouldn’t start on a given biosimilar for a given biologic.

00:07:36 Stephen Small

Yeah, excellent points about efficacy here and keeping that in mind, on the flip side of that, we have an audience member asking, can you use a biosimilar of a patient at a bad reaction to the reference product? Is that any different?

00:07:49 Craig Williams

I can give you the FDA’s that answer that because we had to look at this.

00:07:52 Craig Williams

For the pharmacy review and you should expect the same adverse effects as well as expect the same efficacy so.

00:07:59 Craig Williams

Never say never in terms of maybe something being different, but the FDA did a pretty deep dive and available literature for this. And yeah, they cannot find differences. So whether it’s an infusion reaction or an immune response to the biologic product itself, you should generally expect the same adverse reaction. So if you’re trying this, so do so very carefully monitoring.

00:08:22 Stephen Small

Great, excellent thoughts there. When should a patient switch to another biosimilar of the same Med versus just simply switching to a different Med, can we give a a patient example of maybe something you’ve seen in practice, perhaps a medication that might be common where this takes place?

00:08:38 Bharati Bhardwaja

Yeah, I think you know, again it boils down to efficacy and safety. If patients have developed any kind of a hypersensitivity and allergic reaction, then yes, we would avoid that class of medications in in terms of their mechanism of action, whether it’s a reference biologic or a biosimilar and just.

00:08:56 Bharati Bhardwaja

That are something that is a different mechanism of action. For example, like Amgen beta, the patient was switched from the reference biologic to the biosimilar and we’re seeing more players worsening disease activity, longer time of stiffness when they wake up in the morning. Then yeah, I would.

00:09:16 Bharati Bhardwaja

Probably considering switching them to a different biologic out of maybe the TNF inhibitor class to see if we can get a better handle on our disease activity.

00:09:27 Craig Williams

You know, says he sends remind prescribers this is not if you have a bad reaction and pravastatin tricep bestatin you know, these are not drugs in the you know same class but different compound. These are, you know, the same compound practically speaking from an interchangeable standpoint. So if you’re not responding to the drugs, certainly potentially think about a different biologic altogether.

00:09:47 Craig Williams

But yeah, otherwise expect the same efficacy and the same adverse effects from, you know, a biosimilar to the parent drug.

00:09:55 Stephen Small

If I like that contrast to traditional drugs there.

00:10:00 Megan May

Steve, one example I had at my institution, we were giving a biosimilar for bevacizumab and there was actually a back order of the medication. And so we did have to switch our patients back to the reference product. Again that was just because of not being able to access the biosimilar at that time.

00:10:20 Megan May

That’s really been the main time we’ve had to make a switch in the middle of treatment.

00:10:27 Craig Williams

Yeah, that’s a great point to the earlier point of what the benefits are. Think people off think the benefits are to the health system of saving costs. Having a second plants manufacturing products somewhere else as we all just fully recover from our IV fluid shortage that to caused so much trouble a couple of years ago. It’s just nice to have someone else making the same product in case of some sort of a loss or factory taken offline or just manufacturing shortage?

00:10:55 Stephen Small

And I’m sure there is some hesitation we may encounter from patients when it comes to using or switching to biosimilars. How do you address those concerns?

00:11:06 Bharati Bhardwaja

I found a communication tactic that I’ve kind of shamelessly stole for one of my really good rheumatologists that I work with, and the way that he presents it to patients is that you know you have your recipe from Kentucky Fried Chicken on their fried chicken recipe. And then you have your recipe from Popeyes Fried Chicken.

00:11:26 Bharati Bhardwaja

They’re both fried chicken. They have subtle differences, but they’re essentially pretty much the same. So I’ve used that analogy with patients as well, and it makes it a little bit easier and it’s a little more subtle to kind of give them an idea of what this change means.

00:11:45 Megan May

Some other changes we’ve made once biosimilars came to the market was in the Cancer Center. The pharmacist actually do the patient education in my institution and we have personalized calendars that we make for everyone. Now we have the templates saved so you don’t have to start from scratch every time.

00:12:07 Megan May

But one thing we learned. We included all the different brand names for the biosimilar and biosimilar options and the reference product on the calendars. And then we just highlighted the one that the patient is getting. We learned that that just saved us time from having to completely rewrite it on the calendar every time.

00:12:27 Megan May

With using a biosimilar versus the reference product, the other thing we made a change to was we obtained consent from patients before we give them any treatment for their.

00:12:41 Megan May

Cancer diagnosis and at first, our consent had you list out the specific agent that the patient was getting, and so we were being very specific, including using the generic name and then the those 4 letters that come after with our biosimilars and we updated our consent across our healthcare system. So we wouldn’t have to keep.

00:13:05 Megan May

Re consenting, because if we did make a change, for whatever reason, we were getting another consent. So we actually updated our verbage and we changed it to.

00:13:17 Megan May

To whomever she or he may designate to administer the following chemotherapy and or immunotherapy in parentheses may include an FDA approved biosimilar or generic product close parentheses so that saved us time, the pharmacist and the providers from having to reconsider these patients.

00:13:38 Megan May

And then the last thing I really make sure I point out to patients when talking about biosimilars.

00:13:44 Megan May

Is sometimes I think if we say it’s a lower cause, they might think oh, it’s not as good as the reference product. So just reassuring patients that you know, you get a lower cost because they also get to go through that abbreviated pathway in order to get approval.

00:14:04 Megan May

So it’s not costing the manufacturer as much, so they’re able to pass down that lower cost to patients in the healthcare system. So again, just making sure we explain very clearly to patients what they are getting and in using our words carefully, like we said, I don’t use the word generic when discussing this with patients. I make sure I use the word.

00:14:25 Megan May

Biosimilar and explain what that is. If you’re interested, the FDA actually has a really nice sheet that you can give to patients. It’s called what patients need to know.

00:14:36 Megan May

And it is 3 pages that explains what a biosimilar is in in patient friendly terms. And I I hand that out to all my patients. I think it’s a great reference to have.

00:14:50 Bharati Bhardwaja

I agree with all that and I think to add to what you just shared, Meghan is also including.

00:14:58 Bharati Bhardwaja

All the providers that are part of the larger healthcare team that touches the patient and so whether it’s the infusion nurses, you know the frontline nurses that might be following up with patients on lab results, the physicians, the outpatient pharmacist and providing them with communication.

00:15:18 Bharati Bhardwaja

Tools and like you said, maybe it’s an FAQ or even coming up with scripting on how to communicate to the patient so that the patient is hearing the same messaging from every clinician touch point. Another thing that we found that was a great learning is.

00:15:37 Bharati Bhardwaja

Yes, we inform patients of, for example, formulary change and that they’ll be switched from their reference biologic to a biosimilar whether it’s in the letter form. But we include verbiage in there that they can always schedule an office visit or a phone visit with their rheumatologist.

00:15:57 Bharati Bhardwaja

And hearing it from the rheumatologist first, really kind of sets that switch to move in a successful way. So that other you know.

00:16:07 Bharati Bhardwaja

Health care providers that interact with the patient know that they’ve had that conversation with the rheumatologists, and hopefully they’ve kind of helped provide some confidence in that switch.

00:16:23 Craig Williams

I’ll add to see those are great comments. While we’ve been very careful distinguished generic from biosimilar when you describing it to a patient and I think a lot of patients are on a lot of generics for other medications really is this the only medication patients are on and and I think people have become fairly accepting.

00:16:39 Craig Williams

Of generics or many other medications. So if the patient says, I mean like a generic teach earlier question there. I often say yes it is similar to a generic and concept and and many patients and actually accept that. So I agree with not using term generic upfront. But as you’re explaining this, it can kind of sound like generic and if the patient seems very comfortable with that.

00:17:01 Craig Williams

Then I’m happy to say yes, it is similar in concept to a generic, although it is a biosimilar. Sometimes you can leverage that to a bit if that’s something that the patient is actually comfortable with.

00:17:12 Bharati Bhardwaja

Yeah, that’s a good point. And I know we had the fried chicken recipe, but it’s a different concept for patients to kind of understand when they up until now, there’s been a lot of brand to generic conversions like, OK, I get it, it’s a generic. And so, yes, I’ve kind of used the term of like pseudo generic when I’m talking to patients about switches.

00:17:35 Craig Williams

Yeah. If we could see they’re on, you know, two blood pressure medications and two inhalers and they’re all generics for brandeds. And I mean, again, many patients have become, I think, pretty accepting as we’ve had very good experiences with generics over the past couple of decades.

00:17:48 Megan May

I really like that term pseudo generic. I hadn’t heard it used before, but I might be stealing that for my educations in the future. That’s that’s a good term to use there .

00:18:00 Stephen Small

We have a similar audience question now asking how you approach concerns from providers. Any success stories on guiding hesitant prescribers to using biosimilars?

00:18:12 Megan May

At first, when biosimilars came in the oncology world, I did have some providers that were very hesitant to adopt them into our healthcare system. It actually took us about a year for all of our providers to feel really comfortable. I like to say I went on a biosimilar tour.

00:18:32 Megan May

And when we first started to want to use them, so we have 9 hospitals across the state. So me and another pharmacist, we literally were going office to office talking to our oncologist about biosimilars and and really explaining what it was, because for us that was.

00:18:49 Megan May

A new concept and one thing I pointed out to my providers is even when you have different lots of the reference product, you can’t exactly replicate that living.

00:19:05 Megan May

Organism within these biologics. And so yes, they’re not biosimilars, but they’re also not exactly identical, just like what we said with the the chicken example for patients. That’s what I like to remind my providers. So even lot to lot there could be differences for the reference product. So just think of it like that, this is something we needed to do.

00:19:27 Megan May

To be able to provide more access to patients and be able to be financially cautious and conserving for our healthcare system and so eventually all the providers came on board and honestly now in 2025 it’s not a problem.

00:19:43 Megan May

My providers don’t think twice about it now, but it was a barrier we had to overcome in the very beginning.

00:19:52 Bharati Bhardwaja

Yeah. Megan, we had the same experience the first time we went through a switch. There was a lot of hesitation and we just had, you know, studies from Europe on their experience with switching from a reference product to a biosimilar.

00:20:09 Bharati Bhardwaja

But after we kind of got through some of those growing pains, there’s a lot of change management. Our 2nd and all the follow up switches that we had were pretty seamless. And I think it’s really important depending on the institution that you’re at, it is is having.

00:20:27 Bharati Bhardwaja

In operational strategic plan that kind of outlines how the switch is going to be deployed so that the institution includes some of the factors that we discussed around communication, education, but also what it means to the patient when you’re kind of comparing well, here’s your copay when you’re on a reference.

00:20:47 Bharati Bhardwaja

Biologic, but here’s what your copay could be on a biosimilar which is pretty huge into a prescriber, being able to continue a high cost biologic and affordable way. It’s huge.

00:21:01 Craig Williams

Yeah, right. The the providers will be very open to the, the potential for the the benefit to the patient of the cost savings. So if they are having to burden a fair amount of the increase to your price or depending where they’re at in their kind of insurance plan for the year. So yeah, being able to stay on the product certainly supersedes even any prescribers concern about the biosimilar versus a branded.

00:21:24 Craig Williams

The the reference product so and I just I’d come back to Megan’s point too, that I remember walking into a room of angry neurologist about 20 years ago, and we our institution switched to generic phenytoin from Brandon to Lanton, and everyone was convinced that patients were having seizures and complications from the generic. But but. And we kind of explain what an AB rated generic is and the fact that.

00:21:44 Craig Williams

Like they said, the the branded product here is not the same thing batch to batch, so not every Humira injection you give is exactly the same, even if.

00:21:51 Craig Williams

You’re using the reference product.

00:21:52 Craig Williams

And that that concept did help a lot. That’s I think there’s a misperception that it’s the exact same thing every time with the reference product and that is not the case. So there’s variance with the biosimilar and variance with the branded product and that that helped a lot with generics 20 years ago and that does help a lot with biosimilars now.

00:22:13 Stephen Small

Great ideas for getting patients and providers on board with biosimilars and now that leads to questions about how we can streamline biosimilar use.

00:22:24 Stephen Small

Bharathi how should prescribers write prescriptions for biologics or biosimilars? Are there certain techniques we should be advising to make sure the prescribing process is as seamless as possible?

00:22:37 Bharati Bhardwaja

Yeah, I think it’s, you know, one thing, it’s kind of confusing with the way that biosimilars and their names are presented with their core name and and the suffix. And since there’s so many biosimilars now, you know, I think over like 70 have been approved.

00:22:55 Bharati Bhardwaja

It can get a little confusing and so I think for the most part, most prescribers will will write the prescription using the proprietary name of the biosimilar. So similar is what is done with a biologic reference product. So I think that is I would say would.

00:23:12 Bharati Bhardwaja

Maintain some of the safety parameters and not confusing what’s prescribed.

00:23:19 Stephen Small

Great. And Megan, are there any technology changes we can use to streamline biosimilar use to to guide prescribing almost?

00:23:29 Megan May

At my institution, we relied heavily on our electronic medical record now.

00:23:34 Megan May

So within our EMR…it is smart enough to look and evaluate the patient’s insurance and then it automatically defaults the preferred biosimilar or reference product into our treatment plans.

00:23:55 Megan May

So the provider just has to pick the treatment plan and then our EMR automatically picks what is most cost effective for the patient.

00:24:06 Megan May

And for the healthcare system, that was a huge win for us when we were able to utilize technology in order to help make these decisions.

00:24:17 Megan May

One downside about that is we do have all the biosimilars listed. So as we know with one reference product, you can have several biosimilars. And so for the pharmacy and the infusion center, they keep all of those medications on the shelf as well. So we did have to think about storage when we made this update.

00:24:38 Megan May

To our EMR that we were going to offer all of these options to our.

00:24:44 Megan May

In order to provide the best option for them and we actually update this list quarterly. So we reevaluate their insurance and our contracted costs with the manufacturer for what we pay for the drug as well in order to select what we consider the preferred product for each patient individually.

00:25:08 Stephen Small

That’s a really handy tool there and then does that ever back you into a corner, though? If there are, say, supply issues with a certain biosimilar that the EHR picks, is it easy to switch off of that if that occurs?

00:25:22 Megan May

In Kentucky, we still would contact the provider to tell them we need to make a change for a different biosimilar. If we did have an issue with like back order for example, and then the provider actually would rewrite that prescription and sign it so it can cause an extra step.

00:25:42 Megan May

The in from pharmacy if there is an issue like that.

00:25:47 Stephen Small

And Megan, you bring up a good point here about insurance coverage. So I want to highlight that technology can also help identify when payer coverage may require product switches, including of course, in the Community pharmacy setting. Look for prior auths or other electronic messaging that may guide, which biosimilars are preferred. We know that these products can cost less.

00:26:08 Stephen Small

But payers may still vary in terms of which one they’ll cover, especially when there are many biosimilars for the same reference product out there.

00:26:18 Sara Klockars

Yeah, and different assistance programs might cover different things as well, Turkey.

00:26:24 Sara Klockars

Which brings us to we have all alluded to how many biosimilars there are now and just we have all these different products, especially in your organization, Megan, where you carry all of them. So what are some tips for pharmacy teams to ensure proper storage preparation, dispensing the right product when you have so many on the shelf?

00:26:48 Megan May

That was a concern that I had in the beginning is.

00:26:53 Megan May

What if we dispense the wrong one right? Fortunately.

00:26:58 Megan May

We know it’s highly similar and so I don’t think it would have necessarily caused patient harm at all because efficacy is similar between them. But what I was concerned about in the infusion center, you know we don’t have that point of sale like you do at a a retail pharmacy or if you’re using a specialty pharmacy.

00:27:18 Megan May

So for ours, our patients are billed on the back end and if you dispense the wrong.

00:27:25 Megan May

Preferred product that we got prior off for before you might not have your insurance pay for it, right? They might reject that in the end and then that’s going to be a problem for the patient as well, with cost.

00:27:38 Megan May

So, we’ve done a nice job with our prior off team. We worked with them to make sure they’re very specific in a specific note.

00:27:46 Megan May

Area in our ER, so our pharmacy and pharmacy technicians knew where to look to know what was authorized by the insurance to make sure they are mixing the appropriate reference product or biosimilar product.

00:28:02 Megan May

As far as I know, we haven’t had any issues with this, but in the beginning that was a main concern. Another thing that’s helped is again using technology. So we do have a scanning system, so our pharmacy technicians, they scanned the order, the label that the pharmacist had printed and then scanned the vial before they do any add mixtures.

00:28:23 Megan May

And we also have our pharmacists actually lay their eyes on the vial and compare it to the label before we actually do add mixture as well.

00:28:35 Megan May

Other things, pharmacists and pharmacy technicians really need to be aware of with these biosimilars, they could have differences in infusion rates. So we had to work with our pumps that we use in the infusion center to make sure it was specific with each of the reference or biosimilar products. It could also have.

00:28:56 Megan May

What you mix it in different so fluid differences in the add mixture Part 2. So just making sure everything is labeled very clearly on that label that we put on the bag for our patients.

00:29:08 Megan May

So nursing pharmacy are all aware of which products they’re using and all the precautions that come with it also being really careful on your shelf about labeling, which were like the reference product and then each of the biosimilars, like for example, we have ours and bins.

00:29:28 Megan May

We would never put a reference product in a biosimilar in the same bin. We make sure it’s separated so you don’t accidentally grab the wrong vial before mixing.

00:29:40 Craig Williams

You know, add logistics. It does become big and I would reference at last point don’t put the biosimilar in the same area. So we’re all familiar with stocking pharmacy shelves and the generic being next to the branded, but not necessarily a good idea here because you a mistake can be extremely expensive. So make sure someone purposely has to go somewhere in particular.

00:30:00 Craig Williams

To get the biosimilar versus the reference product.

00:30:06 Sara Klockars

Great points. Thank you. And there are others we can point out to emphasize again. Stay current on your knowledge of state laws regarding interchanging biosimilars and then ensure patients are counseled by a pharmacist when they are switching to a biosimilar or picking up a different product than previously. They can point out differences. The patient needs to know such as storage.

00:30:27 Sara Klockars

Requirements or different injection devices or different administration techniques from the prior product.

00:30:37 Narrator

We hope you enjoyed and gained practical insights from listening to this discussion!

00:30:41 Narrator

Now that you’ve listened, pharmacists, pharmacy technicians, physicians, and nurses can receive CE credit. Just log into your Pharmacist’s Letter, Pharmacy Technician’s Letter, or Prescriber Insights account and look for the title of this podcast in the list of available CE courses.

00:30:57 Narrator

On those websites, you’ll also be able to access and print out additional materials on this topic, like charts and other quick reference tools.

00:31:05 Narrator

If you’re not yet a Pharmacist’s Letter, Pharmacy Technician’s Letter, or Prescriber Insights subscriber, now’s the time—sign up today to stay ahead with trusted, unbiased insights, and continuing education. And as a listener, you can save 10% on a new subscription with code mt1025 at checkout.

00:31:26 Narrator

Be sure to follow or subscribe, rate, and review this show in your favorite podcast app. Or find the show on YouTube by searching for ‘TRC Healthcare’ or clicking the link in the show notes.

00:31:37 Narrator

You can also reach out to provide feedback or make suggestions by emailing us at [email protected].

00:31:46 Narrator

Thanks for listening to Medication Talk!

Medication Talk

Medication Talk Podcast: Full Episode History

Medication Talk: Full Episode History