Last year, UCB launched its Voices on Value blog series to foster a dialogue around how to make our health system better, stronger, and more accessible now and in the future. To advance this dialogue, UCB is releasing its first-ever U.S. Sustainable Access and Pricing Transparency Report, which underscores UCB’s commitment to an innovative, competitive, and value-based system. 

Our approach to innovation has always kept patients at the center. We have a fundamental commitment to enabling people living with severe diseases, their caregivers, and their families to help live the lives they want. We innovate to bring differentiated solutions that provide measurable value to improve patient lives. However, keeping patients at the center means we also help ensure those who need our solutions can access them. 

Sustainability remains the core of our business strategy. Our U.S. Sustainable Access and Pricing Transparency Report articulates how UCB accounts for sustainable access in the U.S. healthcare system, guided by three elements: principled pricing actions, a patient-centered approach to value-driven care, and our partnership-focused U.S. policy platform.

Principled Pricing Actions

In order to sustain innovation for the future, we apply a principled, evidence-based approach when pricing our medicines. The nature of innovation is ever-changing, but patients frequently face multiple barriers to accessing innovative medicines, and the current access environment is unsustainable. UCB is doing our part – we have decreased our cross-portfolio net prices four years in a row. Simultaneously, we have increased our discounts to health insurers and other payers, which in 2021 hit an all-time high of 46.6%. Unfortunately, “middlemen” in the supply chain siphon off many of these discounts, preventing patients from fully benefiting from these discounts at the pharmacy counter. 

Value-Driven Care 

UCB aims to continuously innovate to deliver value-driven solutions for patients that promote affordable access to medicines, reward innovation, and encourage value-based care. 

• Value-Driven Care: UCB supports optimal access to our medicines through a unique value-based contracting approach.
• Equity: We prioritize diversity in clinical trials by using our myUCB digital research platform for decentralized clinical trials, which helps reduce patient burden and increase access to trials. 
• Digital Business Transformation: UCB partners with Aetion, a leader in real-world evidence (RWE) analytics, to leverage RWE in real time and rapidly respond to payer questions around the effectiveness and value of our products. 
• Patient Support: UCB also offers financial assistance programs for patients – including co-pay assistance and ucbCARES, a dedicated service providing support to patients throughout the treatment journey. Since 2016, we have helped over 225,000 patients.

U.S. Policy Platform

Ultimately, to create a more sustainable healthcare system, we need to advance polices that broadly recognize value and improve access and affordability for patients. UCB advocates for policies that move our healthcare system forward:

• Patient Affordability: We are committed to exploring a broad range of value-based contracting and financing approaches that more clearly connect price to value and support smarter spending in the healthcare ecosystem while also supporting policies that reduce patients’ out-of-pocket spending. 
• Preserving the Patient-Provider Relationship: We support policies that enable access and preserve patient-provider shared decision-making, including by supporting the creation of easy-to-use pathways for healthcare providers to override health insurers’ protocols that force patients to try and fail other medications before permitting access to the one prescribed by their physician.
• Supporting Patient-Centered Value Assessments: UCB recognizes the importance of value-assessment frameworks and has developed a broad set of Principles for Value Assessment to ensure value-assessment frameworks support sustainable and equitable access to healthcare. 

UCB is committed to being part of the solution in achieving a sustainable healthcare system. Though our system continues to evolve as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has shown us the urgency of having a healthcare system that prioritizes equitable access for all patients. We will continue to leverage our Voices on Value series to illustrate how we partner with patients and stakeholders across disease areas to support sustainable access for patients and our healthcare system.