Enhancing the Patient Experience

Background

A specialty pharmacy supporting a specialty limited distribution product had increasing difficulty in reaching patients for new and refill prescription coordination.  The pharmacy utilized a dedicated team of patient care coordinators responsible for coordinating new and refill prescriptions via telephone and auto-dialer outreaches.  A significant number of manual and auto-dialed telephone-based outreaches resulted in a substantial amount of patient non-responses that led to episodes of increased medication “never-starts” and non-adherence to therapy.  The patient care coordination team also expressed frustration with their inability to effectively engage patients as well as the repetitive and tedious nature of simply making hundreds of outbound calls per day.

How we delivered

D2 digital patient engagement technology was deployed for new and refill prescription management coordination that included real-time bi-directional communication and workflow automation.  The program was structured to effectively capture required missing information (i.e., insurance information, address, date of birth), confirm prescriber provided information, address any patient questions or concerns and coordinate scheduling for medication shipments.

Results

Results following the initial launch of D2’s digital engagement platform included:

• Manual patient coordinator outbound telephone outreaches were reduced by 61%.
• 63% of patients who were engaged via a digital outreach responded within 24 hours, 86% responded within 48 hours.  
• The pharmacy stated that these results were “a marked improvement” over pre-existing manual telephone and auto-dialing efforts. 
• New and refill prescription turnaround times were “significantly improved,” enabling faster new medication starts and “improving overall adherence.”
• Productivity improvement of over 80% enabling the team to absorb higher patient volumes without adding additional headcount.
• The patient care coordinator team reported “much less stress,” “higher levels of productivity” and “high levels of satisfaction” relative to team and patient engagement.