Step Therapy

With certain prescription drugs, you must use step therapy. This means trying a preferred drug as the first step in treating your medical condition.

The preferred drug is:

• Safe
• Clinically effective
• Cost-effective
• Often a generic drug

You can get non-preferred drugs, but only if the preferred drug isn’t effective or tolerated well. This means you must try the preferred drug first. For example, before you use the brand-name lipid lowering drug Crestor^®, you must try pravastatin, a clinically equivalent generic drug. 

Note: If you’ve tried the preferred drug in the last 180 days, you’ll get automatic approval for the non-preferred drug. Once approved, there’s no expiration date.