▮ Services. Pharmaceutical Commerce Magazine | For Pharma Industry Executives. Matsuk, R. (2009) Challenges in Contract Strategy & Operations for Pharmaceutical Manufacturers [Online]. Available: Over the past 20 years, pharmaceutical contracting has been transformed from being a small incremental part of the typical pharmaceutical manufacturer’s business to one that is integral to almost every market segment. In many cases, filling a conventional prescription invokes multiple contractual agreements between the manufacturer and other parties. For example, sales within the institutional segment of the business can require a manufacturer to honor its fee-for-service contracts with wholesalers, the payment of administration fees to group purchasing organizations (GPOs), and submission of performance-based rebates to individual hospitals.
For retail managed-care sales, manufacturers will still need to honor those same wholesaler fee-for-service agreements and likely pay rebates to pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) or other managed care plans. From an operational perspective, it is not uncommon to identify a number of factors affecting contract performance, including the following: 1.