Cubic Health Inc. has introduced a risk management program aimed at helping plan sponsors with the many considerations for covering medical marijuana in their benefits plans.

The program uses claims data from the past two or three years to provide evidence-based education that’s tailored to a plan sponsor’s industry and workforce. It also includes a tailored risk assessment for each benefits plan that quantifies and anticipates its exposure to legitimate claims for medical cannabis over the next two years, according to Mike Sullivan, chief executive officer at Cubic Health.

“If you get the raw data of every claim that’s been made into a drug plan, for example, by a plan sponsor for . . . say two or three years, and you get every transaction from the pharmacy, every paid claim, reversed claim or rejected claim, if you look at that set of data you can actually assess at an individual level, you can figure out not only who’s got which disease states, but you can also assess the severity of the diseases and the treatments failures they’ve had,” says Sullivan, noting the data is anonymous and encrypted to ensure plan members’ privacy.

The program isn’t necessarily aiming to encourage medical marijuana coverage, but education on the topic is crucial, he adds. “You need to educate yourself about what you need to do to be prepared, but then you also need to educate yourself about what your risk is so you can actually set up a program appropriately,” says Sullivan.

“We want people to know that it’s OK if you don’t want to run out and cover cannabis widely under your plan. We get that for a lot of plans that’s completely unpalatable for safety reasons or financial reasons, but you’re going to have to be prepared because this isn’t going to go anywhere and it’s only going to get bigger. And if you want to protect yourself from a financial perspective and from a liability perspective, you have to know what’s going on in your plan and you have to be ready for it,” he adds.