Pharmacists Play a Crucial Role in Breaking Down Access Barriers to NCCN-Preferred CLL Therapies

Oncology and specialty pharmacists are uniquely positioned to help patients navigate the structural and access-related hurdles that can delay or disrupt treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). In an interview with Pharmacy Times, Joanna Rhodes, MD, MSCE, discusses how proactive pharmacist collaboration—flagging therapies that fall outside NCCN guidelines, streamlining paperwork, and supporting patients—can ease the burden on vulnerable populations and ensure they receive timely, appropriate care.

Q: How can oncology and specialty pharmacists help mitigate some of structural or access-related barriers patients experience when trying to access NCCN-preferred treatment for CLL?

Joanna Rhodes, MD, MSCE: I think one of the ways that pharmacists in particular are so wonderful is that if they see a drug that's outside of the NCCN-recommended guidelines, I think that they should be empowered to say something and to understand why the patient is receiving a treatment. And that's what I love about our own pharmacy team, is that there's a lot of back and forth and collaboration between us and our pharmacists to ensure that patients are receiving the right medications, the right prophylaxis. And so, I do think that that's one step.

I think the other is having the infrastructure built in to be able to take some of the time and paperwork burden off patients as well. Because for patients who have limited internet access, limited access to health care, limited from an insurance perspective, you know, limited access to transportation, adding on one more barrier to them receiving care, whether it's they need to fill out 14 forms, how are they going to get the forms to us, how many times do they need to go back and forth in order to get their medications and their monitoring? I think those are all going to come into play as well. And so, I think pharmacists can be super useful from a collaborative perspective as well.