What Does It Cost? Start with NADAC.
The concept for this viz (a.k.a. visualization) came from simply wanting historical trend charts to assess the change in drug costs over time. Helpful... but we needed to take this a step further to be able to easily compare the price of brand name drugs with their generic equivalents. That data lives in the FDA's databases, so we married that up with the CMS National Average Drug Acquisition Cost database (NADAC) in Tableau and voilà – an interactive drug pricing trending tool that tracks surveyed pharmacy invoice prices. Hover over the line and you can see all of the manufacturers and National Drug Codes (NDCs) each week as well.
NOTE: NADAC is only available from CMS starting in November 2013. Even though it typically doesn't capture wholesaler rebates, in our opinion, it's still one of the best price tracking benchmarks around, which is why many state Medicaid programs use it as the basis for ingredient cost.
