Power launch success with a reimagined approach to patient support

Jenn Millard
Vice President & General Manager, U.S. Integrated Patient Support
IQVIA

Michael Zilligen
General Manager, In-Home Clinical Solutions
IQVIA

Power launch success with a reimagined approach to patient support

A patient’s journey from diagnosis to treatment can be long, complex, and frustrating. Access and financial hurdles often complicate the journey, making it easy for patients to lose momentum and for providers to lose track of their progress.

Patient support programs (PSPs) are designed to help overcome obstacles to starting and staying on therapy. A well-designed program not only leaves the patient satisfied, but also leads to improved health outcomes. However, the traditional approach to PSPs has, over time, created a disjointed patient experience due to disparate services which leads to an overall negative impact on program effectiveness and efficiency.

Patients may struggle through extensive handoffs, hold times, and callbacks. This can lead to delays, as well as uncertainty about what should happen next or where to turn for support. Operators, including field teams, do not have the visibility or knowledge to provide well-rounded support.

In today’s consumer-driven healthcare market, it’s time to reimagine PSPs.

What does it take to avoid common PSP pitfalls? Start by taking a step back. Recognize that every patient is a person with a unique set of life circumstances that may help or hurt their ability to get (and stay) on therapy. A person’s socioeconomic situation (e.g., employment, housing, and family dynamics) are among the many factors that no PSP can alter or control.

What teams can do is apply a human-centric lens to these individual dynamics. Strive to understand the complexity that patients are navigating throughout their lives. Identify what is within your span of control. Then, design and optimize your PSP so it provides help in the broader context of patients’ lives — not just their treatment journeys.

This “whole person” perspective is critical to personalizing the patient support experience based on an individual’s circumstances and preferences.

The case for integrated patient support programs

Today’s model may not be optimal at delivering highly personalized support. In fact, when it comes to PSPs made up of a combination of disparate services, the sum of the parts is not greater than the whole. Rather than focusing on each component in isolation, consider the value of an integrated approach — with a single point of contact for your patients, their providers, and your business. Having an integrated approach means fewer handoffs in serving patients and providers. It reduces the need for several costly application protocol interfaces, as well as clunky file feeds and data transfers. Instead, you create an environment for real-time information exchanges and collaboration. 

With an integrated approach, you can develop a more complete picture of your patients and deliver more personalized support at every stage of their journey. You also gain a cohesive foundation for applying innovative technologies and advanced analytics to further improve and demonstrate how you clear barriers, expedite patient onboarding, and support outcomes.

Integrated patient support: Should you build it or buy it?

While it’s not impossible to stand up end-to-end patient support capabilities, it may not be the best use of limited time and resources. It may also test the limits of internal experience and know-how.

IQVIA offers the benefits of an integrated PSP with the speed, agility, flexibility, and expertise of an outsourced model. We already have the national resources — spanning access, affordability, fulfillment, and adherence — to support your launch. We also have deep expertise in healthcare tech and data. Connected, actionable insights help identify opportunities to better support individual patients and to further optimize program performance.

Streamlining and integrating your patient support program is better for patient experience, prescriber experience, operational efficiency, and — most important of all — health outcomes. Contact us to learn more about how to modernize patient support programs and maximize their impact.