Thomas, a patient suffering from a long term chronic illness diagnosis, has managed his condition for most of his adult life. He also lives with a slew of other mentally destabilizing illnesses, which leads him to rely heavily on the services he gets from his big national brand pharmacy to keep him on track with all of his medications. When a Patient Liaison from his local hospital reached out to him to begin his new medication for his chronic illness, he was skeptical. His Liaison completely understood his skepticism, but explained to him that having all of his medications with one pharmacy helps the pharmacists and technicians stay on top of all of his medications and allow them to check for any potential interactions with the drugs that he’s currently taking. She explained the hospital specialty pharmacy’s services such as home delivery, refill reminders, and clinical pharmacist support. Thomas was very receptive to this idea because it meant having more a streamlined care process and better medication management for his condition. After hearing this, he told his Liaison that he wanted all of his medications transferred over to his hospital specialty pharmacy for better, more convenient patient care. Thomas speaks with his liaison once or twice a week now just to check in with his condition and make sure that he is on track with all of his medications. He speaks to his Liaison like they’re old friends, acknowledging how glad he was to meet her and that everyone in the pharmacy treats him so great! After transferring over to his hospital specialty pharmacy and using their services, Thomas finally doesn’t feel like he’s “just another patient” and looks forward to continuing a healthy lifestyle.

Key Takeaways:

• Improved Time to Therapy: Implementing a specialty pharmacy program in partnership with Shields Health Solutions can shorten a patient’s time to therapy from 21 days (industry average) to 3 days.
• Fewer Readmissions: Having a Pharmacy Liaison and a team of Clinical Pharmacists supporting each patient throughout their treatment plan can result in 22% fewer readmissions for a hospital’s chronically ill patient population.

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