At Shields, we have many different teams and employees that focus on providing support to our patients and potential patients. One of those is our Patient Outreach Coordinators, whose role is to connect with our partner health-systems eligible specialty pharmacy patients and share with them their eligibility to fill their prescriptions with us. Our Outreach Coordinators let the patient know they are qualified and guide them through the benefits our specialty pharmacy offers and make them feel welcome and supported. the following is story from one of our amazing Outreach Coordinators. 

During one of my outreach calls, I spoke with a potential patient who expressed frustration with her current pharmacy team. During our call, she talked about how she wished her present pharmacist could provide more comprehensive care for her when it came to her medication. She felt as though her pharmacist only called to discuss a particular medication rather than calling to discuss her overall health and treatment. Not only was I able to empathize with her, but I was thankful to be able to give her more insight into how switching to our internal specialty pharmacy could help alleviate this frustration.

I was able to inform the patient at this point, not only about our fabulous trained pharmacy clinicians but also about the unique role the liaison could hold in her overall care. I shared our all-around care model with the patient, and she was so happy to know that she would have us on our side, seeing her as a whole person and not just a singular medication. Throughout our conversation, the patient began to share the concerns she was having about being able to afford her copays. She asked if there might be anything we could do to assist her with those.

I informed the patient that we could try various avenues to reduce those costs with the help of the liaison and our dedicated financial aid team. I passed the patient along to the liaison, and sure enough, a few days later, with this amazing team's hard work, we were not only able to get this patient onboarded but were able to reduce the cost of her copay from $95 down to $5.