Tech Enabled Patient Services: Do More With Less in 2023
More recently though, as life science companies strive to ensure improved access to their therapies and reduce operational costs, they are turning to disruptive technology platforms that offer the potential to break through barriers to medication. Unfortunately, some companies are still wrapped up in the old paradigm and spend millions of dollars on patient access solutions but get little in return. Here are four ways a technology-driven patient services solution can enable life science companies to achieve more in 2023:
Automating workflows
From the point of prescribing to driving therapy adherence, automated processes reduce friction across the patient’s medication journey. According to the 2021 CAQH Index Report, automation has reduced the annual cost of healthcare administrative transactions – such as eligibility and benefit authorizations and prior authorizations (PAs) – by $166 billion. And there’s a significant opportunity to save an additional $20 billion simply by transitioning fully to electronic transactions.
Embedding e-prescribing and patients services program enrollment within the clinical workflow of healthcare providers improves the likelihood that doctors will prescribe your therapy and patients will utilize support services that help them stay adherent. Simplifying this often cumbersome process can improve patient outcomes by ensuring that they access programs that can reduce out of pocket and accelerate therapy initiation.
When you consider that healthcare industry stakeholders incur annual costs of $93.3 billion just navigating drug utilization management, it’s clear that pharmaceutical manufacturers should not overlook opportunities for partnerships that can support the prior authorization process for their brands. Time-consuming PA processes can result in high rates of medication nonadherence, hurting patient outcomes and, ultimately, manufacturers’ gross to net. Discover how to reframe your PA strategy with the support of digital solutions that boost patient access and brand success in this Guide for Life Sciences Companies.
Delivering actionable insights
Access to timely and accurate data is essential to executing data-driven patient services stratgies that are responsive to current needs. There is a wealth of data created throughout the prescription journey that can enable manufacturers to steer their patient support programs more effectively and efficiently; however, that data is of little value if it’s not timely or comprehensive. Outdated, inaccurate information hampers informed decision-making and makes measuring progress on patient access programs difficult.
Technology can help commercial teams generate insights on key indicators of patient access such as new prescriptions, refills, adherence rates, coupon utilization, reimbursement rates, and patient engagement to design interventions that drive medication adherence and demonstrate value to payers.
An effective patient access solution turns a broad spectrum of real-time data into insights that provide an accurate view of the patient journey. It enables users to unlock these insights through intuitive, interactive dashboards. You can learn more about the metrics that matter when measuring your patient access program here.
Engaging patients
Offering patient access and support services is the most tangible way for life sciences companies to connect and engage with patients. Each of the touchpoints along the patient’s journey can influence the likelihood of prescription abandonment, time to therapy initiation, and adherence to therapy. With more than $300B in estimated treatment value lost due to medication non-adherence, investing in services to help patients comply with their prescribed treatment is well worth the investment particularly as healthcare consumers increasingly expect seamless digital experiences on par with other industries.
A wealth of evidence shows that patient support services positively impact adherence, clinical outcomes, and satisfaction while lowering overall healthcare costs; however, these services can only deliver value if patients use them and most do not. Traditional patient support HUB programs, which employ a call-center approach, tend to be misaligned with today’s consumers’ expectations resulting in suboptimal patient engagement - typically in the range of 10-20%.
A technology-enabled approach to patient services should enable manufacturers to elevate patient engagement by:
Making it easy for patients to interact with value-added programs
Offering a frictionless, consumer-centric digital experience that meets patients where they are
Giving patients options for how to engage and receive communications to have complete visibility and control of their prescriptions
Check out this eBook to learn more about modernizing the patient experience to achieve your brand’s commercialization objectives.
Facilitating scalability
Commercializing a medication, particularly a specialty drug, is fraught with risks across the product lifecycle that can negatively impact growth, including increased competition, shrinking timeframe to hit peak sales, declining reimbursement, cost pressures, value-based pricing, and expiring patents. In addition, numerous variables, such as higher-than-expected volume, formulary expansion, and label changes, can precipitate the need to scale the capabilities of a manufacturer’s patient access platform.
Scalability, “the measure of a system’s ability to increase or decrease in performance and cost in response to changes in application and system processing demands,” should be a primary consideration when evaluating enterprise technology. One of the biggest benefits of scalable technology is that it allows companies to be more agile and more easily adapt to business changes with a lower up-front financial outlay. Technology driven patient services solutions that rely on software are better positioned to respond to unexpected changes in demand than models that rely exclusively on human capital to engage with patients.
Ready to do more with less?
Patient access platforms that automate workflows, deliver insights, engage patients, and enable scalability are vital to capitalizing on opportunities in the pharmaceutical marketplace. To ensure a better return on their investments in digital tools and solutions, life sciences organizations should seek partnerships with technology vendors to help them capture impactful data and help leverage and scale the analytics to elevate their brands.
As an end-to-end commercialization partner, PHIL offers a digital platform that streamlines medication access and provides an integrated approach to data analytics across the patient journey. Request a consultation today to discover how you can unlock your unique value.
