As the industry continues to navigate the ever-changing healthcare landscape, the patient experience has become an integral of treatment decisions. Patients and caregivers are playing a more active role in managing disease and patient engagement has become a priority for the industry. How we engage our patients, and their physician offices, from prescription to fulfillment, can impact treatment decisions including compliance and product use.
The process can involve many touch-points especially for specialty drugs. The patient and the physician office may interact with the HUB, specialty pharmacies, payers, and the company multiple times following a prescription. The quality of these interactions and the perceived level of convenience can help to retain patients. In addition, the value added services that companies provide, and other patient assistance programs can help to raise the reputation of the company. A thorough mapping of the process can help to identify potential pain points and improvement opportunities that can improve the overall patient and even physician office experience.
We often underestimate the number of touch points, and potentially PAIN points, that a health care provider, patient and/or caregiver goes through from the point where they are diagnosed to the point where they are on therapy. In a recent project, a patient journey that was initially believed (or better, assumed) to be a straightforward process within the vaccines market, proved to us what happens when we assume. The journey from start-to-end had over 100 “transactions” and 40 pain points where patients and providers were leaking out of the system. That’s a lot of leakage! However, after addressing these issues and developing wraparound services, including education and training, financial support, and enablement support services, patients and providers were able to get better and faster access and support to the therapies that they needed.
What about your patients, and their journeys? Do you have a strong understanding of the road they follow, the hurdles their physicians face to get access to your products, and where patients may be leaking out during their journey? RxL Partners has experience in this area and can collaborate with you to map out the fulfillment process and identify improvement opportunities to enhance the patient journey.
Contact us and we can share with you our expertise in this area and figure out what specific opportunities exist for your brand.