Zitter Health Insights and Specialty Pharmacy Times to Grant Awards in Specialty Pharmacy Customer Satisfaction

ZITTER HEALTH INSIGHTS (ZHI), in a partnership with Specialty Pharmacy Times, will publish the results of their Specialty Pharmacy Satisfaction Survey (PSS), and, in turn, recognize the top performing specialty pharmacies for their achievements in customer satisfaction.

The 2 organizations aim to release the results in the first half of 2017, based on research from 2016, in order to draw focus to a growing, unmet need within the industry. Specialty pharmacies, a relatively recent pharmacy distribution model, arose out of the need of many newly launched medications to be distributed outside of traditional retail pharmacy channels.

This is because these medications require special handling or unique patient training, come at a high cost, and/or treat rare diseases. This new way for patients to receive their medications evolved over the last several years, however, the field is complex and it continues to grow and change.

Many stakeholders, including biopharmaceutical manufacturers and payers, require specialty pharmacies participating within their networks to assess and report on patient satisfaction, as do most accrediting agencies.

Within this changing market, Zitter Health Insights has developed a unique service offering to help specialty pharmacies, biopharmaceutical manufacturers, payers, and accrediting bodies better understand patient satisfaction and how it ties into their operations.

ZHIs Specialty Pharmacy Patient Satisfaction Survey is designed to provide insight into the elements that influence patient satisfaction, to distinguish between specialty pharmacies on meaningful measures, and to help specialty pharmacies improve.

By conducting research with thousands of patients who utilize the top 10 to 15 national specialty pharmacies, the PSS can identify the subtle differences between pharmacies and evaluate trends in satisfaction over time.

The PSS awards will recognize the hard work and efforts that specialty pharmacies have made to accommodate patient needs by quantifying each patient’s unique experience with their specialty pharmacy. This is made possible by the fact that the Patient Satisfaction Survey has a much larger reach than simple satisfaction-style questions.

Instead, PSS is a broad-based study that touches on multiple service components, such as:

• Patient choice and specialty pharmacy selection
• Financial assistance and reimbursement services offerings
• Communication and interaction from multiple patient touch-points
• First fill/refill experience
• Customer service and Net Promoter Score
• Patient switching behavior
• Unique specialty pharmacy services
• Verbatim patient feedback

By incorporating all of the above data points, ZHI is able to confidently measure what matters most to patients and why. This information can then be combined into a comprehensive award system that meets the current standards of the major accrediting organizations, such as URAC.

Since its inception just 1 year ago, the PSS has successfully provided pharmaceutical manufacturers and specialty pharmacies valuable and actionable insights concerning patient satisfaction. In fact, manufacturers have begun to incorporate PSS results into their quarterly business review process.

Meanwhile, specialty pharmacies have been able to monitor customer-facing employees and services in order to benchmark themselves against competitors. This added value has also piqued the interest of accreditation bureaus and payers, both of which have expressed a need for this type of service in the market.

For the first time in the specialty pharmacy industry’s history, there is a consistent and unbiased approach to understanding what drives patient satisfaction and how organizations differ in generating customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Future iterations of ZHIs Patient Satisfaction Survey will be expanded to better serve the specialty pharmacy industry stakeholders, since it is abundantly clear that the ability to continually receive patient feedback has proven to be valuable for specialty pharmacies, payers, and manufacturers alike.

Look for more details regarding the PSS Awards to be unveiled through Specialty Pharmacy Times publications, or for more information, please email SP-awards@zitter.com. SPT