OR WAIT null SECS
© 2025 MJH Life Sciences™ and Pharmaceutical Commerce - Biopharma Business News, Market Insights. All rights reserved.
A session explores how manufacturers can refine GTN strategy, strengthen pricing governance, and navigate increasingly complex distribution-channel economics, while maintaining both commercial performance and patient affordability.
The final day of Trade & Channel Strategies in Philadelphia finished strong, with a multitude of thought-provoking presentations to attend.
One of which revolved around “Optimizing GTN Strategy—Balancing Channel Economics and Market Access,” led by Lannett Company’s VP of finance and corporate controller, Jeffrey R. Miller, CPA, CGMA. He sought to accomplish multiple objectives during the session, including helping attendees with ways to:
When it comes to US-based contract pricing discounts and chargebacks, in many cases,
Miller explained, there is a flow between the group purchasing organizations (GPOs) and the physician offices, hospitals, or pharmacies and the manufacturer. Wholesalers are the stakeholders shipping the products directly to them, as that link between manufacturers and those aforementioned dispensing outlets.
In the case of Lannett, a pharma manufacturer of generics, over 90% of the product the company sells to are to the “Big Three” wholesalers, which is where most of its discounting comes in.
How is GTN derived exactly? In basic terms, as he explained, let’s say that:
When it comes to final net price considerations, the commercial and finance teams often take different factors into account. For example, a commercial team will consider dead net, along with price change considerations, including market competition, cash flow, channel mix, and a price protection penalty, along with shelf stock or price protection exposure for generics.
For the finance team on the other hand, the net sales are reported on a financial statement as an all-inclusive total. The GTN encompasses direct sales and sales adjustments; chargebacks, purchased-based rebates and admin fees (for generics, that’s for wholesalers, retailers, and GPOs); PBM/contracted rebates/admin fees (for brands); government rebates (including Medicaid, Medicare, Tricare, MDP), returns; and miscellaneous claims.
However, there are various challenges and check points that stakeholders could encounter along the way.
First, regarding complex discounting models, for contracts with wholesalers, retail pharmacies, GPOs, cancer centers, hospitals, and clinics, discounting could be based on WAC or indirect pricing. There can be various versions and ways to interprets said contracts, while buyers might have more than one. As a solution, revenue management systems (think Model N, IntegriChain, etc.) can help with that.
It’s important to point out that strategic planning and contracting conversations demand collaboration between the commercial and finance teams, so that they can discuss a multiple topics, including:
What could potentially be a solution for these challenges? A great one, Miller noted, would be a pricing committee. In his personal experience, they are very proactive in tackling issues, such as the impact of pricing changes.
“They [the pricing committee] are terrified of the government pricing impact of price changes, terrified to the point that they call meetings—which we absolutely appreciate—when they're considering a price change,” he explained. “You know well enough in advance that we have time to get support from our gross-to-net team to crunch some numbers and tell them what it's going to mean for AMP price, what it's going to mean for Medicaid liability and things like that, so that they can make a decision of whether it's the right decision.”
Reference
Miller JR. Optimizing GTN Strategy—Balancing Channel Economics and Market Access. December 11, 2025. Trade & Channel Strategies, Philadelphia. https://informaconnect.com/trade-channel/
Related Content:
