Intermountain is leading a collaboration with other U.S. health systems to develop a new not-for-profit generic drug company. It won’t be an Intermountain-owned company but Intermountain and our partners are organizing it; together, we’re putting our patients at the center of care and stepping up to solve serious problems that face our communities and the country. 

Why start a new generic drug company?

There’s no question our patients urgently need us to reduce healthcare costs. One way to do that is by tackling the high costs and shortages of essential, lifesaving generic drugs. This initiative will make these essential generic medications more available and more affordable.

Who else is involved?

We’ve teamed up with remarkable partners who share our vision to take on this serious challenge. Our partners in the collaboration include Ascension, SSM Health, and Trinity Health — in consultation with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The formation of the new generic drug company will be guided by an advisory committee that includes a roster of well-known experts from the pharmaceutical industry, business, and government.

What will the new company do?

The new company intends to be an FDA-approved manufacturer and will either directly manufacture generic drugs or sub-contract manufacturing to reputable contract manufacturing organizations. It will provide patients an affordable alternative to products from generic drug companies. It will also seek to stabilize the supply of essential generic medications administered in hospitals, many of which have fallen into chronic shortage. 

The five organizations involved in the new company represent more than 450 hospitals around the U.S. Other health systems will likely soon join. The company will initially focus on selling to hospitals, but may eventually expand to offer the products more broadly. It will focus on drugs whose prices have risen sharply or that have been in short supply.

Research into the actual costs of manufacturing and distributing generic drugs suggests that in many instances, generic drug prices can be reduced to a fraction of their current costs. That would save patients, and the healthcare systems that care for them, hundreds of millions of dollars each year.