

For many pharmaceutical brand teams, patient affordability programs represent the single largest line item in their profit and loss statements. To rationalize co-pay expenditures and ensure that they achieve their well-intentioned objectives, leading manufacturers are creating patient affordability Centers of Excellence ("CoEs") with the goal of applying cross-functional expertise to devising innovative patient affordability strategies.This paper reviews the state of co-pay programs today, explains why some patient affordability CoEs fail, presents success factors that companies should consider, and suggests what the future may bring.