Intermountain Healthcare to create drug company in response to price hikes

SALT LAKE CITY — Intermountain Healthcare announced it will be manufacturing its own brand of generic drugs, which could change the dynamic of the generic drug market.

They are calling it Project Rx, and it includes five health systems that involve 450 hospitals nationwide.

During a press conference Thursday morning, Intermountain said they are already fielding calls from other health systems interested in partnering in its endeavor.

Intermountain Healthcare President and CEO Dr. Marc Harrison said they do not want to continue watching patients suffer because they cannot afford certain generic drugs due to their egregious prices.

“In some circumstances drugs have been driven up 1,000 percent … We believe drug prices can be reduced to a fraction of their current costs,” Harrison said.

In the last couple of years, patients have watched companies like Turing Pharmaceuticals, EpiPen, heart medication companies and others manipulate prices and increase them by hundreds of percentages.

“Our goal is to make sure essential generic drugs are available and affordable to everybody,” said Dan Liljenquist, vice president of enterprise and initiative for Intermountain. “So we invite everybody to partner with us. If you think about a successful business, you want to sell your product as broadly and as completely in the market as you can; we also want to make sure we are partnering in such a way that people will share our vision for this company.”

They have another year of studying the market and say they are working with scholars across the nation to find generic drug problems.

Read the full story here:  Fox13Now.com.

Written by DANICA LAWRENCE, Fox13Now.com.

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