Summer Intern Perspectives: Palna Mehta, AMCP Foundation/Pfizer, Inc. Managed Care Intern
Published in December 2020
I feel privileged to have completed the AMCP Foundation/Pfizer, Inc. Managed Care Summer Internship. Throughout the course of the internship, I was provided with a holistic experience in various areas of managed care and the ability to develop my data analysis, literature evaluation, and presentational skills. I primarily worked at Independent Health with the clinical pharmacy team, where I learned a great deal about formulary management and was able to assist with monograph writing, literature evaluation for the purposes of step therapy design, and attend a P&T meeting. My main project was a retrospective claims analysis, which descriptively investigated the impact of the pandemic on outpatient prescription claim trends.
Furthermore, I also had the opportunity to engage in various conversations, attend meetings, and work on smaller projects with other teams as well. Independent Health is extremely unique in that it is also associated with Reliance Rx (a specialty pharmacy) and Pharmacy Benefit Dimensions (a PBM), which provided me with further networking opportunities and the ability to learn about these entities. Alongside the Pfizer Medical Outcomes Specialist, I was able to help initiate a project centered around rheumatoid arthritis management with the specialty pharmacy and present some relevant background material to a team of Pfizer medical outcomes specialists. I also appreciated the various Pfizer training sessions, Pfizer virtual intern day, the Fundamentals of Managed Care course, and the AMCP eDossier demonstrations, which allowed me to learn about key principles of managed care and about areas of managed care within the industry as well.
I was assigned a mentor who works for a PBM called IngenioRX. My mentor provided me with an excellent reading list to help me expand my understanding of managed care, and prepared various relevant topics to discuss with me during our weekly meetings.
I want to thank my preceptors Dr. Mark Wrobel and Dr. Ying-Fen Swagler as well as Pfizer Medical Outcomes Specialist Dr. Brian Gucwa for their continued support for the projects and for providing me with many opportunities to learn and expand my skill set. I also want to thank Dr. Walter J. McClain, Dr. Carmine Colavecchia, Martin Burruano, and the rest of the Independent Health Pharmacy Services Team and Pfizer for their help in supporting the project and for making this experience valuable. Lastly, I would like to thank Paula Eichenbrenner and Ebony Clay for helping coordinate such a wonderful virtual internship experience and my mentor Dr. Meredith Diamond for providing me with an abundance of resources and educating me on various managed care related topics.