Vizient forecasts a 3.84% rise in pharmacy spending

Non-pharmaceutical supply spend expected to increase 2.3%

IRVING, Texas, Jan. 28, 2025 — Vizient, Inc. released its new Spend Management Outlook representing the best estimate of the change in the price of pharmaceuticals, medical devices and supplies, capital equipment and services between July 1, 2025, to June 30, 2026. The report projects a 3.84% increase in pharmacy and an increase of 2.3% in non-pharmacy spend over that timeframe. The report also includes a comprehensive analysis of emerging trends and pricing dynamics affecting healthcare. View the Vizient Winter 2025 Spend Management Outlook.

The Spend Management Outlook is a comprehensive forecasting and intelligence resource that helps healthcare organizations look at total expense management for both the acute and ambulatory care environments, in an integrated way, including medical and surgical products, laboratory, indirect spend and purchased services, capital equipment solutions, pharmaceuticals and physician preference items.

“Given the wide-ranging challenges across all dimensions of spend, siloed solutions are no longer sufficient for effective forecasting. Our unified approach aims to provide actionable insights into the product categories with the highest spend while highlighting shared trends across these critical areas of resource investment,” said Steven Lucio, senior principal of insights and intelligence at Vizient.

The Winter 2025 Spend Management Outlook includes these key highlights:

Pharmaceutical growth in outpatient and ambulatory care settings

The movement of healthcare into ambulatory spaces continues to grow at an accelerated pace, and that shift is reflected in the list of the top 15 drugs by total spend for Vizient pharmacy program participants.

Humira®, manufactured by AbbVie, is again at the top of the list and semaglutide (Ozempic® and Wegovy®) from Novo Nordisk retains its top 5 position. New to the list is tirzepatide (Mounjaro® and Zepbound®) from Lilly at No.10, further illustrating the impact of the GLP-1 category on health system practice. All these agents contribute significantly to the increase in pharmacy spend in ambulatory settings (3.96%) exceeding the growth rate projected for acute care (3%).

“The shift to ambulatory setting sites reflects the industry’s broader focus on cost efficiency and patient-centered care, which will have big impacts from financial, clinical and operational perspectives, as it reshapes the healthcare industry,” said Carina Dolan, associate vice president, market intelligence, Vizient.

Drug price inflation driven by specialty medications

Specialty and personalized pharmaceuticals, which typically are high-cost, high-touch medications for rare and complex disease states, account for 54% of total drug spending in the U.S., according to IQVIA. Humira®, STELARA® (Janssen Biotech) and SKYRIZI® (AbbVie) are projected to have the largest price increases for the mentioned timeframe. Biosimilars continue to gain influence. A comprehensive biosimilar chart featured in the Outlook includes 24 molecules with corresponding FDA-approved biosimilar products, future pipeline products with estimated dates and interchangeability status. Overall, specialty and complex medications are predicted to increase by 4.44%.

At the end of 2024, there were 745 medications on the Vizient specialty pharmaceutical list, with more than half used in oncology, neurology and autoimmune and inflammatory disease states, ensuring that the influence of these products will continue for the foreseeable future. Furthermore, with the expansion of cell and gene therapy, providers will need to invest more time and attention to the significant administrative and financial challenges of these agents as well as the staffing and technology needed to conduct benefits investigation, patient education, clinical monitoring and financial planning.

The Outlook also includes a list of high-impact drugs that are expected to enter the market in 2025 and their anticipated wholesale acquisition costs (WAC). Notable are two oncology agents, a subcutaneous version of a previously approved drug, amivantamab (Rybrevant®), for non-small cell lung cancer (estimated WAC $325,000 to $525,000) and a new first line treatment for unresectable or metastatic hepatocellular carcinoma, camrelizumab (estimated WAC $170,000 to $250,000).

Market dynamics impacting medical and surgical product costs

Vizient estimates that market prices encompassing the non-pharmacy healthcare supply chain will increase an average of 2.3% between July 2025 to June 2026. Factors driving cost increases include long term elevated prices for raw materials, cost pressures for freight and shipping and tariffs impacting several medical-surgical (med-surg) products manufactured in China.

The med-surg supply category is expected to rise 2.3% and includes the previously finalized tariffs on several products manufactured in China including supplies critical to healthcare such as gloves, needles, syringes and certain face masks. While Vizient expects a limited effect for suppliers who already largely manufacture med-surg products in countries outside of China, one product category will be affected — enteral syringes. However, Vizient provided feedback on the proposed tariffs, ultimately securing a delay on the effective date of the tariffs on enteral syringes until 2026. This gives manufacturers time to diversify their production outside of China.

“We are certainly aware of the potential for additional changes in tariffs with the change in administration,” said Jeff King, research and intelligence director at Vizient. “These dynamics are part of the reason strategic forecasting should be a routine part of provider operations and not just an annual exercise-based budgeting cycle.”

Other notable areas of increase that providers should prepare for include construction (4.9%), water services (5.1%) and medical gases (4%).

Pharmacy projections are based on Vizient client purchases from Oct. 1, 2023, through Sept. 30, 2024. Non-pharmacy supply chain projections are based on a Vizient analysis of various public sources including the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Agriculture and Energy Information Administration. Read more in the Vizient Spend Management Outlook.

About Vizient, Inc.
Vizient, Inc., the nation’s largest provider-driven healthcare performance improvement company, serves more than 65% of the nation’s acute care providers, including 97% of the nation’s academic medical centers, and more than 35% of the non-acute market. The Vizient contract portfolio represents $140 billion in annual purchasing volume enabling the delivery of cost-effective, high-value care. With its acquisition of Kaufman Hall in 2024, Vizient expanded its advisory services to help providers achieve financial, strategic, clinical and operational excellence. Headquartered in Irving, Texas, Vizient has offices throughout the United States. Learn more at www.vizientinc.com.