Letter From the CEO
Welcome to the Questcor Pharmaceuticals website! Whether you are a healthcare professional, a patient, a caregiver, an investor, or a prospective employee, we hope that the information provided on this website is useful to you.
Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, Questcor is a small biopharmaceutical company whose products help patients with serious, difficult-to-treat medical conditions. Our main product, HP Acthar Gel, is a unique complex of pituitary hormones which primarily includes ACTH, and which is most commonly used in the treatment of certain neurological and kidney disorders. At Questcor, our goal is to ensure that each and every patient who needs Acthar has access to drug, regardless of income level or insurance coverage. In 2001, the company acquired Acthar from a much larger pharmaceutical company that was in the process of discontinuing manufacture of the product due to very low sales. Since that time we have steadily invested in upgrading the Acthar manufacturing processes, making improvements in the distribution process and expanding the Acthar patient assistance and support programs. Because of these efforts, and despite many earlier years of back-orders and rationing before Questcor owned the drug, Acthar is now consistently available to the patients who need it, regardless of their ability to pay.
Recent years have seen dramatic changes for our company. For many years the company lost money because of the very low volume, highly specialized nature of Acthar. This ultimately forced us to make the very difficult decision to reduce operations and lay off 50% of employees in early 2007. However, in late 2007 we finally became profitable, the result of successfully implementing a new orphan pricing model for Acthar. With newfound financial stability, Questcor established a highly effective insurance reimbursement team focused on helping patients rapidly gain confirmation of insurance coverage from their plans before going on treatment. In addition, the company dramatically expanded financial support for patient assistance programs aimed at helping uninsured and underinsured patients in need of Acthar therapy. These programs have now provided more than $50 million worth of free drug to patients in need. Questcor also created several co-payment assistance funds to cover the cost of insurance co-payments for patients who need assistance. Finally, to relieve hospitals of financial burden and to ensure immediate access to Acthar for patients who are hospitalized, Questcor initiated a new program to provide free vials of Acthar to hospitals for in-patient use. This program has so far provided over $10 million worth of Acthar free-of-charge to children's hospitals.
Looking to the future, Questcor is now actively supporting new research in a number of important areas of medicine, particularly in serious, difficult-to-treat medical conditions where there is significant unmet need. These include research projects in core areas of interest for Questcor such as infantile spasms, multiple sclerosis and nephrotic syndrome. In addition, we are also now providing biomedical research funding in other areas such as ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) and traumatic brain injury.
The funding of this critically important medical research and the establishment of our unrivaled support programs for Acthar patients have been made possible as a direct result of the strategy that Questcor successfully initiated in late 2007.
At Questcor, our goal is to ensure that each and every patient who needs Acthar has access to drug, regardless of income level or insurance coverage. With the dedicated efforts of our employees, insurance reimbursement specialists, and extensive patient support programs, we believe that we are meeting this goal.
Working with researchers, physicians, patients and families, we look forward to continuing to expand access to Acthar for the patients who need it most.
Sincerely,
Don Bailey
President and CEO
Questcor Pharmaceuticals