Generic Albuterol Products Return to Non-Preferred Status for Medicaid Members

Attention: All Providers Effective Date: August 28, 2020 Providers should monitor the Texas Children’s Health Plan (TCHP) Provider Portal regularly for alerts and updates associated to the COVID-19 event. TCHP reserves the right to update and/or change this information without prior notice due to the evolving nature of the COVID-19 event. Call to action: Beginning August 28, 2020 the Texas Vendor Drug Program (VDP) will restore non-preferred status to a number of generic albuterol products. VDP temporarily removed nonpreferred status from these products in March due to reported drug shortages for albuterol. The decision to reverse this change was determined following verification of sufficient availability of the preferred products currently in the market. Texas Children’s Health Plan wanted to notify you in advance so that these changes do not impact the ability of your STAR and STAR Kids members to obtain their medications. A summary of drug status for the bronchodilator/short-acting beta agonist inhalers is below:

Preferred	Non-Preferred
Albuterol nebulizer solution ProAir HFA Proventil HFA	Albuterol HFA, levalbuterol HFA, levalbuterol nebulizer solution, ProAir RespiClick, Ventolin HFA, Xopenex HFA, Xopenex nebulizer solution

  Next steps for providers: If your patients switched to any of the above non-preferred generic albuterol products during the drug shortage from March 20, we encourage you to change them back to either of the preferred products. Providers will not be able to prescribe the listed generic albuterol products without a non-preferred prior authorization. If you have any questions, please email Provider Network Management at: providerrelations@texaschildrens.org. For access to all provider alerts, log into: www.thecheckup.org or www.texaschildrenshealthplan.org/for-providers.