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 Elsevier'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.

Data Sources

How we created Our Dataset

  1. 46brooklyn visualization tool of choice = Tableau Prep

  2. Join full NADAC database to clinical information from GSDD on NDC

How to Use   

  1. Choose any active ingredient (i.e. the drug’s generic name) from the list (optionally, select a package size in the lower right)

  2. Choose one or more product names within the group(s). We like using it to compare the cost of the brand to its generic

  3. If desired, explore specific package size pricing by selecting the filter in the lower right (generally not impactful for tablets or capsule, but can matter for inhalers, liquids or other non-solid dosage forms).

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. As of September 2024, the historic NADAC data has become too large for one dashboard due to Tableau Public size limitations. To explore NADAC trends before 2016 click here.

 
 

v 3.55 - data as of October 4, 2024
For full release notes click here