Specialty Pharmacy Patient Choice Award Finalists Represent Excellence

Publication
Article
Specialty Pharmacy TimesMarch/April 2017
Volume 8
Issue 2

The Specialty Pharmacy Patient Choice Award was created by Zitter Health Insights and Specialty Pharmacy Times to honor specialty pharmacies and their commitment to patients.

The Specialty Pharmacy Patient Choice Award was created by Zitter Health Insights and Specialty Pharmacy Times® to honor specialty pharmacies and their commitment to patients. The criteria for this award were formulated by an external committee comprised of individuals representing pharmaceutical manufacturers, payers, trade organizations, consultants, and equity research firms.

Specialty pharmacies are eligible for either the pharmacy benefit manager (PBM)/payer-based or non-PBM/payer-based award. Pharmacies are selected for a Patient Choice Award based on their average Net Promoter Score from all 4 quarterly surveys conducted each calendar year. Finalists and winners will be honored at the Asembia Specialty Pharmacy Summit each year, with the first awards ceremony taking place on May 2, 2017. 

2017 Specialty Pharmacy Patient Choice Award Finalists: Non PBM/Payer-Based

Organization: Senderra Specialty Pharmacy

Primary disease state: Immunology (rheumatoid arthritis, dermatology)

What does being a finalist mean to your organization? Our mission is based on our core belief that patients are people, and that health care is best delivered through a personal relationship, and not a transaction. Therefore, being a finalist is great recognition for all Senderra team members that we are demonstrating our mission daily, and our patients acknowledge and appreciate our culture.

What role does patient satisfaction play in your operation? It is everything! We believe that the cornerstone for better patient outcomes is personal, high-touch care that empowers patients to focus on their health. Patient satisfaction really is an indication that patients feel confident about their clinical plan because of the clinical services Senderra offers.

How does your organization focus on customer service? Why is that important to your organization? Why is it important to the industry? Customer service is at the core of both our mission and business model. Our patients choose to use Senderra as their specialty pharmacy because they trust our expertise and service. As an industry, we need to realize that customer service and better outcomes are uniquely coupled. Customer service is a key driver of proper compliance and adherence, patient education, and clinical outcomes.

What 3 things contribute to your success in the area of patient satisfaction?  

• personal relationships  

• consistent communication  

• proactive follow-up.

In general, how can patient satisfaction be improved?

More time and resources invested into patients.

How do you maintain your patient satisfaction moving forward?

Being committed to improving and innovating our patient-centric models.

How would you be able to leverage your nomination for this award to educate and inform patients?

While recognition is great for our team members, this nomination should be shared with the patient community to educate them on what they should expect from specialty pharmacies. Specialty pharmacies should not be defined by the drugs they dispense; rather, it’s the services they provide.

What is an interesting fact about your organization that is little known?

Our name, Senderra, comes from the movie “Lonesome Dove.”

What is the most rewarding aspect of operating a specialty pharmacy?

We get to bring together personal care, expertise, and innovation to connect patients with the specialty medications they need to improve their lives. What a great opportunity and responsibility!

Organization: BioPlus Specialty Pharmacy

Primary disease state: Hepatitis C, oncology, immune mediated inflammatory, and multiple sclerosis

What does being a finalist mean to your organization?

Our company is built upon a guiding foundation of core values that touches our long-term plans and steers our daily decisions; we call it CART. Competence, Accountability, Respect, and Trust serve as measures of how we work with one another, how we interact with our patients and customers, and even how we communicate with our competitors. Our aspiration is that prescribers, payers, pharma, patients, accrediting bodies, and regulators would agree that our performance reflects the highest tiers of those CART values.

What role does patient satisfaction play in your operation?

As a pharmacy that works closely with patients and caregivers, we are on the front line in the quest to provide fast starts of care, facilitate a bridge over costly medications, assist with complex insurance issues, and provide counseling and education so patients have the opportunity for the best experience in controlling or even curing their disease.  

How does your organization focus on customer service? Why is that important to your organization? Why is it important to the industry?

BioPlus identified 3 years ago that specialty pharmacies took 2 weeks or longer to start patients on therapy. BioPlus, in its commitment to innovation in customer service, set upon a yearlong process to re-engineer our company, and the end result was the development of our 2-Hour Patient Acceptance Guarantee. Since that time we have seen our loyal base of prescribers surge, leading to BioPlus now being one of the largest independent specialty pharmacies in the United States.

What 3 things contribute to your success in the area of patient satisfaction?  

• Over the more than 27 years that BioPlus has been in this industry, we have remained owned and operated by pharmacists. Our quality of clinical service and the soft touch of caring have never faltered towards short-term profiting.  

• We innovate. Whether it’s creating www.BioPlusHealth.com, so patients have the option to online-message their pharmacist or request a refill at a time that’s convenient for them, or perhaps it’s the Cancer Care Kit, that we provide to all our patients taking drugs for cancer, at every step we aim to enhance the patient experience.  

• We strive when others quit. The dramatic story of our Pharmacy Director desperately and finally succeeding in innovatively delivering drugs for a patient in New Jersey during the wrath of Hurricane Sandy was reported by the Boston Globe, and shared in Patrick Thien’s book of remarkable customer success, “Rhythm.”

In general, how can patient satisfaction be improved?

We are obsessed with the patient and customer experience. This involves constructing the right process and having the right trained people for the outcome. We follow this up with a weekly monitoring of key performance indicators that measure our progress and results.

How do you maintain your patient satisfaction moving forward?

We plan to continue a relationship with Zitter so that we can objectively measure our comparative results, as well as share stories internally about how we succeeded or were challenged, and find ways to improve performance and move our results positively each quarter.

How would you be able to leverage your nomination for this award to educate and inform patients?

BioPlus would share the Zitter award designation on par with a J.D. Power award, or other respected award, in our education and Web materials for patients. Creating a Web platform just for patients, www.BioPlusHealth.com, represents the start of our plans to empower patients to understand how we can help them.

What is an interesting fact about your organization that is little known?

BioPlus created and maintains a secured employee portal that allows us to share stories that our patients and customers have provided about how their lives were changed by an employee or an action. The stories don’t provide names, but they share a struggle that was overcome. These stories are rewards that continue to feed an organization that is yearning to improve and to lead in excellence.

What is the most rewarding aspect of operating a specialty pharmacy?

You can enrich someone’s life today. Patients often need another advocate after they receive their diagnosis. Sometimes they find that person in the busy physician’s office or perhaps it’s a well-informed caregiver, but often it’s a new friend from BioPlus who called them shortly after they left the physician’s office to let them know how we are navigating the insurance process, what portion of the co-pay we have already found funding for, or how quickly they can start treatment.

Organization: Providence Health & Services; Credena Health, LLC

Primary Disease states: Cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, HIV/AIDS, fertility, hemophilia, hepatitis C, Crohn’s disease, psoriasis, and growth hormone deficiencies.

What does being a finalist mean to your organization? 

As a specialty pharmacy provider within a large integrated delivery system, we have built our clinical service levels and prided ourselves on providing high touch, high-value quality service to our patients and members. Credena Health’s pharmacists and technicians care deeply for our patients, and being named a finalist for the Patient Choice Award, is a testament to their dedication to live the mission of Providence Health & Services in providing compassionate care for all.

What role does patient satisfaction play in your operation? 

Patient satisfaction is a guidepost for us to give us feedback as to whether the operational, quality, and service standards we have built and put into place are having an impact for those we serve. This is how we measure whether all of the planning, resource allocation, personnel recruitment and management, and implementation are achieving the desired outcomes for the end consumer. Patients are at the center of every decision that we make and our primary goal is to ensure that they experience the best possible care and customer service that we can provide.

How does your organization focus on customer service? Why is that important to your organization? Why is it important to the industry? 

Our organization prominently utilizes patient satisfaction measures in all services in our key success metrics to highlight patient satisfaction as an organizational priority, on par with finances and quality measures. It is important to our organization as a key indicator of our ability to meet the needs of those we serve in not only a clinically focused, quality manner, but also in a way that meets the needs of the patient in a personal, compassionate way while attending to their clinical concerns. Patient satisfaction is a key measure to demonstrate accountability to meet the needs of those we serve with the resources required to do so.

What 3 things contribute to your success in the area of patient satisfaction?  

• Dedication and clinical expertise of the Credena staff in serving our patients, including excellent communication to patients and providers, financial assistance support, and strong relationships.  

• Credena Health optimizes the shared resources of our integrated delivery network to provide a connected patient-centered, team-based experience for all patients, thus decreasing fragmentation of care.  

• Credena Health’s success in patient satisfaction is driven by our missional promise: “Together, we answer the call of every person we serve: Know me, Care for me, Ease my way.”

In general, how can patient satisfaction be improved? 

We receive valuable patient insights through frequent phone conversations throughout the work of serving each patient. Because Credena Health cares about each patient’s experience, we are planning to open up additional channels for our patients to submit their thoughts online. With all of these avenues of collecting patient feedback, we believe we can further refine and develop our operations to achieve new levels of satisfaction, loyalty and, in turn, clinical effectiveness with our patients.

How do you maintain your patient satisfaction moving forward? 

The board of directors of the organization continually monitors patient satisfaction, and ensures we have the appropriate measures and service standards in place to meet patient’s expectations. By receiving regular patient feedback reports, this will facilitate continual review and modification of our services to continue to perform at the highest levels of patient satisfaction in the industry.

How would you be able to leverage your nomination for this award to educate and inform patients? 

I believe recognitions such as this award give patients and payers confidence in our ability to meet their specialty pharmacy needs. It also is important to pharmaceutical companies in their discernment of which specialty pharmacies they will contract with for limited distribution channels. Both of these audiences are important to our ability to continue to build and improve our level of service to maintain the highest levels of quality and satisfaction in the industry.

What is an interesting fact about your organization that is little known?

Credena Health’s name is derived from the word credence, meaning confidence, trust, and faith. We work hard to ensure that our patients have confidence, trust, and faith in the services that we provide.

What is the most rewarding aspect of operating a specialty pharmacy?

Because Credena Health is part of the integrated delivery network, we are able to be an active member of the care team. Having an integrated specialty pharmacy allows us to provide the full continuum of services that patients expect in their partnership with a health care provider.    

Organization: PANTHERx Specialty Pharmacy

Primary Disease state: Rare and orphan diseases

What does being a finalist mean to your organization? 

No other measure means more to us, not business growth nor profitability. Our involvement in the Zitter Health Patient Surveys has afforded us a temporal validation that our mission to redefine the level of care provided in specialty pharmacy is being recognized by the patients whom we serve on a daily basis. PANTHERx has invested, and continues to invest, heavily in improving patient outcomes, which include both patient satisfaction and improved health.

What role does patient satisfaction play a part in your operation? 

Patient satisfaction plays a direct role in a patient’s willingness to remain adherent to their specialty therapies and become further engaged with the high level of clinical care that we provide. Our commitment to patient satisfaction doesn’t end with clinical care; however, it is interwoven into every aspect of our business, including financial counseling, quality improvement, accreditation, technology, business development, budgeting, growth, and, importantly, human resources and talent management.

How does your organization focus on customer service? Why is that important to your organization? Why is it important to the industry? 

Our approach to patient engagement is highly focused on sustained relationship building, and finding unrivaled ways to do so. Our proprietary patient management technology allows us to enhance each patient engagement by building upon the last, so each patient’s experience is truly customized and focused. We challenge ourselves to disrupt and innovate to find new ways to connect with patients so they can understand they aren’t just another number to us.

What 3 things contribute to your success in the area of patient satisfaction?  

• Authentic dedication—We sincerely care about our patients on the journeys they are undertaking  

• Uncompromising quality—We insist on attention to detail across our patients’ journeys to ensure that we deliver excellent care to them every step of the way.  

• Mutual growth—We understand that this industry is dynamic, so we commit to educating not only our patients, but also our providers, our partners, and ourselves to stay ahead of the curve and exceed expectations.

In general, how can patient satisfaction be improved? 

As an industry, it is imperative for each specialty pharmacy to bring what is “special” back to the specialty pharmacy patient experience. We must take an active role in the care of our patients by engaging them, communicating with them, educating them, and being available immediately when they need us. At PANTHERx, we use external metrics like the survey, internal metrics, social media, direct patient feedback, and more, to be sure that every plan we implement is tracked and managed for the benefit of all of our patients. Each patient counts.

How do you maintain your patient satisfaction moving forward? 

We utilize the insights provided to us by external metrics, such as the Zitter Health Insights Patient Satisfaction Survey, as well as internal metrics, social media, and direct patient feedback to identify focus areas for improving our care quality on an ongoing basis. Continuous improvement and responsive action plans prevent us from the threat of induced complacency secondary to our positive patient satisfaction results.

How would you be able to leverage your nomination for this award to educate and inform patients? 

We must use it as affirmation of our ongoing commitment to improve satisfaction, not simply as a pat on the back for what we’ve done thus far. Our goal is to use it as a catalyst to dig deeper and more broadly to find out what is making our patients satisfied and dissatisfied, and quickly develop and implement corrective plans.

What is interesting fact about your organization that is little known?

PANTHERx was conceived by an industry veteran and 3 former students (all Pitt Panthers) at a staple Pittsburgh restaurant chain, Eat N’ Park, and was first opened in a garage. In the very early days, a nun who resided in the apartment above the garage would collect our mail and hold onto any remittance checks received for safe keeping.

What is the most rewarding aspect of operating a specialty pharmacy?

The acuity of specialty conditions, particularly those in the rare and orphan populations, pose numerous challenges to patients and families, physically, emotionally, and financially. To hear our patients and their families, who often are facing the most challenging times that life has to offer, say that their experience was made better by our involvement in their care — that is the most gratifying, and humbling, aspect of what we do.  

Organization: Amber Pharmacy & Hy-Vee Pharmacy Solutions

Primary Disease state: Transplant, oncology, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, Crohn’s disease, hepatitis, multiple sclerosis, growth hormone.

What does being a finalist mean to your organization? 

Being a Specialty Pharmacy Patient Choice Award finalist instills great confidence and pride that we are doing the right thing for our patients. We frequently receive positive feedback from our customers and we feel like we are doing a good job, but with the Zitter survey tool, we can prove that we have high levels of patient satisfaction and objectively assess how we compare to our competitors. In addition, our high ranking is particularly rewarding because it is truly a tribute to the hard work and compassion of our employees.

What role does patient satisfaction play a part in your operation? 

High levels of patient satisfaction correlate to increased adherence and improved outcomes. We believe patients can only focus on their health and well-being when basic needs are addressed. That is why Amber Pharmacy goes above and beyond to offer psychosocial services, financial assistance, comprehensive education and counseling on quality of life, nutrition, and additional services that you would not typically find in a pharmacy.

How does your organization focus on customer service? Why is that important to your organization? Why is it important to the industry? 

Customer service is part of every employee’s orientation. It is ingrained in the culture of our organization and covered constantly throughout the organization. It’s important because much of our business is referral based. The reason we have returning customers is because of the high level of customer service and care provided. It is important to the industry because our patients are the sickest of the sick. They must have a higher level of service, support and coordination of care to more effectively manage their condition and focus on treatment.

What 3 things contribute to your success in the area of patient satisfaction?  

• The culture of our organization is the driver of our success. Our culture is one of family-based values: integrity, compassion, caring, loyalty, reliability, knowledge, respect, and consistency.  

• Always putting our patients first, focusing on and catering to the individual needs of the patient, building personal relationships, and the willingness to go above and beyond to take care of patients.  

• Extensive and ongoing employee training and selective hiring of individuals with similar values and a desire to provide exceptional levels of customer service and care.

In general, how can patient satisfaction be improved? 

Our experience is that patient satisfaction is achieved through putting patients first and building strong relationships. We often hear from patients that they are grateful to know that when they call Amber Pharmacy, we know who they are and what they’re calling about. They aren’t treated as just a number, and they know that the person on the other end of the line truly cares about them.

How do you maintain your patient satisfaction moving forward? 

At Amber Pharmacy, we know that culture doesn’t just happen. We create it, sustain it and recruit for it. Though the company is growing, we spend a great deal of time educating new employees on expectations regarding the level of customer service provided and the culture of the organization. We regularly conduct customer surveys to ensure patient satisfaction and to identify areas for improvement.

How would you be able to leverage your nomination for this award to educate and inform patients? 

Amber Pharmacy would be able to leverage our nomination to educate patients on the importance of speaking up about the care they receive. We would conduct a media and marketing campaign to inform patients of the importance of participating in the Zitter survey and surveys like this, so that the pharmacies with the best service and a true focus on the patient can be identified. Similarly, the Zitter nomination gives Amber Pharmacy leverage to bring to providers, payers and pharmaceutical manufacturers to demonstrate a commitment to excellence.

What is an interesting fact about your organization that is little known?

Founded in 1998 as a specialty pharmacy, Amber Pharmacy was one of the first pharmacies in the nation to focus on specialty conditions.

What is the most rewarding aspect of operating a specialty pharmacy?

Every day we get to make a truly meaningful difference in the lives of our patients. We are able to provide much needed services and assistance to patients who have been diagnosed with a life-threatening and/or chronic condition, many of whom are going through the most challenging and fearful time of their life.  

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: center; line-height: 12.0px; font: 9.0px Helvetica; color: #ffffff}span.s1 {letter-spacing: 0.9px}

2017 Specialty Pharmacy Patient Choice Award Finalists: PBM/Payer-Based

Organization: CVS Health

Primary disease state: We serve more than 43 specialty disease states through our infusion, specialty pharmacy, and retail capabilities.

What does being a finalist mean to your organization?

The employees of CVS Specialty wake up every day asking how they can better serve their patients. Receiving a recognition like this means so much to all of us, because it means we have helped make a difference in the lives of our patients.

What role does patient satisfaction play in your operation? 

To us, patient satisfaction drives everything we do. We believe patients are most satisfied when they feel as healthy, informed, and empowered as possible. To meet those needs, our operational model includes personalized, expert support to help make it easier for them to manage their condition, and retail and digital solutions to provide them with more options in how they order and receive their medications.

How does your organization focus on customer service? Why is that important to your organization? Why is it important to the industry? 

We regularly survey our patients, and track satisfaction with every aspect of the patient experience and our services. We use this feedback to further enhance our services to customers, members, and patients. We closely monitor specialty patient satisfaction feedback on a near real-time basis, and have a hot alert and issue resolution SOP to address specific patient concerns through direct, personal outreach. We review the experience to identify how to ensure we don’t make the same mistakes again.

What 3 things contribute to your success in the area of patient satisfaction?  

• Real-time monitoring of patient satisfaction.  

• Personalized, expert support to help make it easier for patients to manage their condition with the integration of a CVS Pharmacy that provides patients with convenient options for drop off and pick up/delivery without giving up the personalized support they expect from their specialty pharmacy CareTeam.  

• Digital tools help engage patients in their care and provide more options in how they request refills.

In general, how can patient satisfaction be improved? 

We constantly monitor patient satisfaction and make changes to address any trends that we see. We also believe patients are most satisfied when they feel as healthy, informed, and empowered as possible. If specialty pharmacies are aligned to meet those needs and adapt to changes, their patients should have high satisfaction.

How do you maintain your patient satisfaction moving forward? 

Our employees focus every day on finding better ways to make a difference in the lives of our patients. As a result, our focus is on improving our patients’ satisfaction, not just maintaining it. We focus on new ways to support the patient, as well as the physician office caring for that patient.

How would you be able to leverage your nomination for this award to educate and inform patients? 

This award underscores our ongoing commitment to, and focus on, patient satisfaction, and validates our approach to ensuring our patients receive the best possible care and attention.

What is an interesting fact about your organization that is little known?

CVS Specialty is one of the oldest specialty pharmacies in the industry with decades of specialty expertise behind it. Right now we are transforming our specialty operating model to improve the physician experience and patient outcomes.

What is the most rewarding aspect of operating a specialty pharmacy?

Delivering on our emotional commitment to make a difference in the lives of our patients and help them on their path to better health.

Organization: Humana Specialty Pharmacy

Primary Disease state: Humana Specialty Pharmacy dispenses medications from many disease states, including neurology, autoimmune, oncology, pulmonary, and antiviral.

What does being a finalist mean to your organization? 

At Humana Specialty Pharmacy patients are at the center of everything we do. Humana’s mission is to help our members achieve lifelong well-being. Tied into that, Humana Specialty Pharmacy’s vision is to improve patients’ health by knowing them, showing them we care, and making it easier and more convenient for them to get their medication.

What role does patient satisfaction play in your operation?

At Humana Specialty Pharmacy patient care and satisfaction is in our DNA. Humana Specialty Pharmacy was established as a subsidiary of Humana Inc in 2009. For more than 50 years, Humana has developed a reputation for innovation in coordinating high-quality care. Today, those roots in patient care still drive our unique approach to pharmacy services, focused on optimizing patient care and outcomes.

How does your organization focus on customer service? Why is that important to your organization? Why is it important to the industry? 

At Humana Specialty Pharmacy patient service isn’t just an area of focus, it’s our business model. With the implementation of ACA and the move toward value-based care, all parties in the health system are aligning behind patient health. We understand that service is a key to patient engagement, which in turn leads to better health outcomes for our patients and helps them achieve life-long well-being.

What 3 things contribute to your success in the area of patient satisfaction?  

• Show patients we care — The most important thing is to have a patient-centered culture that expects us to deliver a perfect experience at every touch-point.  

• Know our patients and what they need — We solicit customer input every step of the way and we’re not afraid to make bold changes to meet customer needs.  

• Help our patients — Whether it’s communicating with physicians or working with foundations for patient assistance, we build “helping” into our model.

In general, how can patient satisfaction be improved? 

Often, patients taking specialty medicines are dealing with a complex condition, and an equally complex health system. If specialty pharmacies can remove some the complexities by taking the patient out of the middle, streamlining communications with physicians, and leveraging technology to make ordering faster and simpler, overall patient satisfaction could improve. Humana Specialty Pharmacy has made some great strides toward this already, which is why we are excited to be nominated as that means what we are doing is being noticed by our members.

How do you maintain your patient satisfaction moving forward? 

Initial satisfaction isn’t easy, but maintaining and improving on those results is where the real work begins. At Humana Specialty Pharmacy we have made lots of progress, including removing delays in first fills, removing barriers to access, developing patient-focused web and mobile tools, securing access and building programs to support emerging therapies, and improving communication with prescribers to facilitate faster processing and helping them achieve their patient goals.

How would you be able to leverage your nomination for this award to educate and inform patients? 

In the specialty pharmacy arena, it’s important that patients have confidence in their pharmacy. We also recognize patients often look for reassurance from their physicians’ office. We would welcome the opportunity to share this recognition not only with patients, but with physicians/prescribers so they can be confident responding to patient questions about Humana Specialty Pharmacy.

What is an interesting fact about your organization that is little known? 

Our patient base at Humana Specialty Pharmacy is approximately 75% Medicare, making us one of the largest specialty pharmacies serving Medicare patients.

What is the most rewarding aspect of operating a specialty pharmacy? 

At Humana Specialty Pharmacy, we take great pride in knowing that our work is to make people’s lives better—there is no more noble purpose.

Organization: US Specialty Care

Primary Disease state: Multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV, hepatitis C

What does being a finalist mean to your organization? 

Over the last couple of years, we invested significantly and elevated the quality from both customer and clinical service perspectives. Our pharmacy obtained URAC accreditation in 2015, which was our first step in our journey towards excellence. This award is a second confirmation that our investment of time and resources helps us deliver industry-leading results on a daily basis.

What role does patient satisfaction play a part in your operation?

When we first designed the operational elements, we decided to focus on having the patient be the center of our efforts. In developing our process, we implemented a workflow where a dedicated team of individuals would focus specifically on that first patient encounter. The team educates our patients on our entire process, helps them find financial assistance, and provides personal one-on-one care that can be lost when dealing with other pharmacies.

How does your organization focus on customer service? Why is that important to your organization? Why is it important to the industry?

We focus on customer service by putting the patient at the center of the entire lifecycle of a prescription. As a result of these efforts, patients know that we care about them and that they are our first priority. High levels of customer satisfaction are also critical to the industry at large because of the important role pharmacies play in the overall healthcare and wellbeing of some of the most seriously ill patients in our society.

What 3 things contribute to your success in the area of patient satisfaction?  

• One of US Specialty Care’s founding principles is that we manage patients and not prescriptions. We create a culture of compassion and instill a philosophy of caring, which translates into a higher level of patient satisfaction.  

• Secondly, we are dedicated to making a great first impression with all of our patients. To achieve this goal, we have a devoted team of individuals who provide education to new patients and help them navigate specialty pharmacy processes.  

• Lastly, we use a patient care advocacy model, which pairs patients with a dedicated resource. The individual responsible for a patient will proactively reach out to them in advance of needed refills to schedule and coordinate delivery.

In general, how can patient satisfaction be improved? 

After receiving feedback from our patients, we are evaluating our usage of technology, such as emails, text messaging, web portals, and mobile applications, to improve our patients’ experience with US Specialty Care. We want to leverage technology whenever possible to simplify that process for our patients, while maintaining our high-touch service model to increase patient satisfaction, improve medication adherence rates, and ensure optimal clinical outcomes.

How do you maintain your patient satisfaction moving forward?

We will maintain our high satisfaction rates by listening to our patients about areas that need improvement. We remain focused on the fact that we are privileged to be a part of our patients’ care teams. We regard our patients as people and not prescriptions. We find that simple philosophy yields dramatically different outcomes.

How would you be able to leverage your nomination for this award to educate and inform patients? 

It is common for our patients to speak with a supervisor and share stories about the outstanding service that our employees provide. It is rare for a week to go by that someone does not go out of their way to make sure a supervisor knows the incredible service they received and the level of extra effort that was taken to help resolve an issue. We are confident that this award will come as little surprise to our patients who interact with us on a daily basis.

What is interesting fact about your organization that is little known? 

US Specialty Care has the ability to provide HIPAA-compliant video teleconferencing services for face-to-face consultations with patients by pharmacists. Patients appreciate being able to put a face with a name of a pharmacist that is central to their care.

What is the most rewarding aspect of operating a specialty pharmacy?

At US Specialty Care, we are committed to helping manage and care for our patients. We take our role as their specialty pharmacy very seriously. It is not enough to just provide an accurate product; we review all aspects of their treatment to ensure the best possible outcomes. We consider it a privilege and an honor to be a trusted partner with the specialty care of our patients.

Related Videos
Image credit: Andrea Izzotti
Inflation Reduction Act is shown using the text and the US flag - Image credit: Andrii | stock.adobe.com
Pharmacy Interior | Image Credit: Tyler Olson - stock.adobe.com
Pharmacist writing prescription pharmacy counter | Image Credit: Jacob Lund - stock.adobe.com
Credit: Cagkan - stock.adobe.com
© 2024 MJH Life Sciences

All rights reserved.