Joe, a newly diagnosed cancer patient, was struggling to afford the new medications prescribed to him for treatment. When Joe’s hospital specialty pharmacy team received his new scripts, they immediately started the prior authorization (PA) process for the drugs. Unfortunately, once the PAs were in place, Joe’s specialty pharmacy team learned that he would have extremely high co-pays for each drug and would not be able to afford his new oncology medications. This message was relayed to the pharmacy’s financial assistance team, who was able to save Joe $10,000 in medication costs through grant funding. After discovering how the financial assistance team had helped, Joe told his Liaison that his pharmacy team likely just saved his life because he would not have been able to start his treatment without their assistance. Now Joe can fight back against his cancer without worrying about how he can afford his next refill.

Key Takeaways:

• Reduced Copays: On average, the Shields’ Financial Assistance Team can reduce a patient’s copay to under $8 versus the national average of $100. This allows the patient to focus on their treatment instead of worrying about paying for their life-saving medication.
• Exceptional Patient & Provider Satisfaction: Having a dedicated Pharmacy Liaison as part of a patient’s care team results in 99% patient satisfaction and 97% provider satisfaction versus the industry average of less than 50% patient and provider satisfaction.

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