Rhythm Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:RYTM) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Whitney Ijem: Awesome. Thanks. And then — excuse me, one on HO. Can you remind us, are there any patients in like an ongoing long term extension study from the Phase 2? Or is there any additional longer term follow-up in HO that we should be thinking about either being collected or being presented in 2023?

David Meeker: Yes. So 14 patients entered the long term extension. And yes, you should be paying attention to that. Our goal will be to update that experience some of this later in the year meeting and the specific abstract submission, but that would be our goal is to link it to that. But that’s very important as with all of these, the original 12 to 16 weeks is a very short period of time and what everybody including regulators are looking for is durability. And so we’re looking forward to being able to update further experience.

Whitney Ijem: Excellent. Thanks so much.

Operator: Please standby for our next question. Our next question comes from Michael Higgins with Ladenburg. Your line is now open.

Michael Higgins: Thanks guys for taking the questions and congrats on the quarter, including the ongoing launch. A couple of questions for Jennifer, if I could. I believe in your remarks, you noted that there’s some state Medicaid programs that have decided they will not cover IMCIVREE at this point. Is that something that can be revisited within this next year? Thanks.

Jennifer Chien: Yes. So to your point, yes, I did outline that there are some certain states that we have patients already on path. We are very — ongoing in terms of our efforts to continue the education process, not giving up in terms of really seeking reimbursement. And I would say that through our education efforts, we get more and more coverage decisions made for IMCIVREE as we move forward into some launch through this first year through in terms of the . There are certain opportunities that we have that are perhaps more low hanging, for example, for Medicaid programs they have and (ph) program that’s available for more pediatric and adolescents, which is an opportunity for us to follow-up in terms of getting reimbursement. But once again, the follow-up and efforts just in terms of opening up access state by state is ongoing.

David Meeker: And Michael, that’s really a critical point in the sense that aside from something like Medicare where there’s a statute and there’s certainly way to work that until the statute to changed and other companies are trying to get that change. But everything else, there’s sort of never a definitive no. And we’ve organized it in a way where we recognize at some point, it’s not maybe not be in immediate near term, but there’s never a no. You just keep working this system and in a surprising way some of those no way opportunities become yes. And it opens up and that patient gets covered.

Michael Higgins: I appreciate that. Is this something that is in the single digit raise? Is this something that’s really infrequent? Or is it something that’s maybe kind of a 25%, 50% programs scenario, which once you release that lever, you’ve got another avenue of patients. So just trying to characterize the degree of this impact?