Flexible Technology for Collaborative Care

Gregory Leighton, RPh, vice president of clinical solutions and patient access for Asembia, discusses how technology solutions can enhance collaborative care for specialty pharmacists.

Gregory Leighton, RPh: So, when you think of specialty pharmacy as a whole and how they operate: orders come in to them from a prescriber, they would do all the reimbursement support services, then they would do some type of patient outreach. Traditionally, a lot of specialty pharmacies, for example, are closed door. A lot of retail products are the reverse; they're open access, and there's—I would say—less control.

What happens, it’s when you want to really improve access and improve operations; when you segment the workflow and look at different needs, technology solutions such as electronic prior authorizations, such as the ability to do some type of peer-to-peer clinical reviews with prescribers and patients to get access to information; providing prescribers with alternative means of connecting to the pharmacy that can improve operations. So, maybe that prescriber has access to a unique portal to dive into that pharmacy, or maybe the pharmacy has access to the EMR, so they provide more collaborative care. Building models to support that and being able to really drive efficiencies, so that the specialty pharmacy and the specialty pharmacy’s hub or patient support service is ingrained in the entire process. It helps to not only reduce costs, but it also improves efficiency gains, drops the costs, and is able at the same time to really provide value that it based outcomes to patients.