Julia, a foster mother to a child living with a chronic illness, recently requested that her foster daughter’s specialty medications be filled at the hospital specialty pharmacy. When a Hospital-Pharmacy Liaison reached out to Julia, she explained that her daughter had been taking the same medication for two years. Unfortunately, her daughter had been in and out of foster homes for most of her life and it was often difficult for her to get treatment and stay on medication.

Adding to her frustration, Julia explained that even when her daughter was in a more stable situation, the mail order service they used would not deliver her medication until the end of the last possible day she needed it. Julia told the Hospital-Pharmacy Liaison that she is also a foster parent to five other children as well. She was desperate for some help with her daughter’s medication to make it easier on the entire family.

The Pharmacy Liaison listened to Julia’s concerns and explained the services that the hospital specialty pharmacy could offer her daughter. She talked about home delivery, monthly refill follow-ups, and a team of clinical pharmacists who will proactively call make sure everything is going well with the medication. Julia couldn’t believe that all of these services existed in a specialty pharmacy program and said, “I wish there were more places like this that cared this much to help families out!” 

Key Takeaways:

• Integrated Care: 3-5x more patient care interactions leads to higher patient satisfaction rates and fewer lapses in care
• Holistic Care Team: Having a dedicated Pharmacy Liaison as part of a patient’s care team results in 99% patient satisfaction
• Reduced Copays: Being able to reduce a patient’s medication copay to the Shields’ average of $8 versus the national average of $100 relieves the patient of worrying about how they will be able to pay for their life-saving medication, which in turn improves their medication adherence

To learn more about the difficulties that a specialty pharmacy patient faces and how implementing your own in-house specialty pharmacy program can provide better, more integrated care to these patients, check out this video: https://bit.ly/2UEtoQM