The QUIC form was reviewed during two quarterly work group meetings, May 10, 1996 and November 7, 1996. The final resolution of QUIC #960004 was during the November 7, 1996 work group meeting.
Coreen Pickett stated that Aldara is a new topical ointment product, with a one (1) to two (2) year release date. The issue is what NCPDP feels would be a unit of measure for the product. The standard states that topical ointments should be in "grams". However, it comes in a packet of .25 gm. The issue is to eliminate rounding to one (1) for each unit. It would then be considered, in a box, to be 3 gm's total and would then be 12, because each packet would be rounded to one (1). There will be 12 single use packets in a box. The question Coreen Pickett asked, would "eaches" be a solution? The work group stated that "eaches" would require a new release of the standard. Ed Edelstein stated that during the Telecommunication meeting, held on May 9th, it was proposed in the new version that everything would be in metric decimal quantity. Therefore, it is possible that by the time this product is on the market, everything will be measured in metric decimal. There is another issue with HCFA, if something is less than one (1), they want it reported as one (1).
Barbara Reed recommended that before a final decision can be made, the pricing compendia should be contacted to see how many other products fall into this category, if this information is available prior to the August meeting, it should be distributed to the attendees for their review.
The members of the work group collected information from the pricing compendia (First Data Bank, Medi-Span and Medical Economics) and voted that a change be made to product identification standard. The change would be "Unit of use packages with a quantity less than one becomes a quantity of ONE EACH." The update of this addition to the product identification standard will become effective February 1, 1997. The unit of measurement for the product Aldara - One Each Packet.