Beyond the Pharmacy

Speed isn't all that matters to customers. Skalitzky thinks it's possible that her printing company will "outgrow" NMHC and move to getting pharmacy benefits as part of a health insurance plan. "Sometimes if you tie those together, you can swing a better deal," she says.

NMHC is responding by trying to turn itself into more than just a pharmacy benefits administrator. Partly on the strength of Integrail, NMHC is starting to style itself as a "total health-care solution" company.

Where the pharmacy administrator provides reports that help customers track their drug cost trends, Integrail goes further with predictive modeling and risk analysis of all types of health-care costs. That means a benefits manager such as Skalitzky can use drug refill order data to detect when chronically ill employees are failing to take their medicine, which in turn can head off much bigger bills from hospital stays.

As Hall explains: "We're helping customers lower costs, maintain costs and avoid future costs."