Leveraging Technology for Optimal Patient Outcomes: How to Overcome Barriers to Access, Affordability & Adherence

Conga’s Tom Cowen offers insights on leveraging technology for optimal patient outcomes. This article originally appeared on Solutions Review’s Insight Jam, an enterprise IT community enabling the human conversation on AI.

Although more than four years out from the initial onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. healthcare system continues to grapple with and respond to unprecedented challenges resulting from various post-pandemic factors, such as persisting staffing shortages – estimated to reach 10 million by 2030 – and rising inflation that impacts every aspect of healthcare including medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, rent, maintenance, labor, and more.

The pressures on the healthcare system also extend to interrelated challenges in patient care and engagement, particularly surrounding three key areas, or the three As: Patient Access, Affordability, and Adherence. These all contribute to poorer patient outcomes caused by a delay in or lack of access to care, heightened financial burdens associated with necessary treatments, and suboptimal patient usage.

Yet the technologies of today present a huge opportunity for leaders of the healthcare industry to adapt and innovate accordingly, and Patient Access teams at Life Sciences (Pharmaceutical and Medical Device) companies have taken the lead in doing so to provide exceptional patient care. These Patient Access or Experience solutions are now being implemented at dozens of life sciences companies.

By leveraging the right tools and partners correctly, life sciences leaders worldwide can work to overcome these three key patient challenges to enhance patient care and drive optimal patient outcomes.

Increase Access to Care Through Streamlined Patient Experiences

Despite the explosive uptick in the availability of virtual healthcare services in recent years post-pandemic, many pharmaceutical manufacturers still face widespread disparities in equitable patient access in underserved, elderly, and third-world communities due to individuals’ insurance plans, socioeconomic status, and geographic location, which affects both the ability to make in-person and telehealth appointments, due to a lack of broadband access.

Trends in healthcare delivery and the rising wave of cell and gene-based therapies suggest that patient care will be delivered through increasingly specialized and personalized forms of treatment, requiring a deeper understanding of, access to, and involvement with patients than ever before.

For manufacturers of specialty drugs to overcome these challenges and help meet patients where they are, requires streamlined, timely, and secure interactions between patients, providers, and payers. Achieving these higher levels of patient-centricity necessitates improved internal coordination across departments by utilizing a single, secure platform for communication. This solution should also have document generation capabilities available that create and process important documents quickly and accurately such as prior authorization forms or letters of medical need, and auto-generate simple contracts like NDAs and patient intake forms, to speed up signatures and approvals, accelerating access to care.

Leveraging such a solution will be particularly beneficial to patients with chronic conditions or those prescribed specialty drugs as their treatment plans require more attentive specialty care. As a result, providers are enabled to focus more on providing care to patients with urgency as opposed to getting caught up in the prerequisite processes to provide that care.

Improving Affordability of Care

Where low-income patients are struggling to pay for drugs and medical devices when not covered by insurance, ongoing affordability issues of drugs continue to worsen, especially for those with chronic conditions where therapies are often taken multiple times a day for decades. Insulin is one such example, where our politicians are publicly arguing over who lowered the cost of insulin. While the government came to the rescue for diabetics, there remain millions of patients with chronic conditions struggling to fund their daily dose.

Further showcasing the need for more affordable care and treatment, a Wall Street Journal article reported that multimillion-dollar drugs in the cell and gene-based category are now a potential financial burden on the patients who are prescribed them.

To help patients overcome financial barriers to receiving care, life sciences manufacturers must leverage a connected technology solution that allows patients, payers, and providers to secure financial assistance forms, promotions, and coupons for their patients. While these affordability methods provide enough aid for many common pharmaceuticals and devices, other methods must be explored for high-priced drugs. This need will only grow as cell and gene-based therapies are approved, with 2,000 in late-phase trials. Together, payers and manufacturers are exploring outcomes-based pricing to ensure payment is made as efficacy is proven.

Leveraging Data Insights to Minimize Patient Non-Adherence

Each year in the United States, patient non-adherence can account for up to 50 percent of treatment failures, around 125,000 deaths, 500 billion dollars, and up to 25% of hospitalizations, so it’s critical pharmaceutical companies understand their role in helping to minimize these metrics and optimize adherence to care.

Through data-centric connected technology solutions that offer greater access to patients and providers, pharmaceutical companies can realize ongoing patient touchpoints throughout the patient journey, leverage insights to uncover patients’ reasons for non-adherence, and react accordingly. For instance, a patient may have difficulties adhering to the complexities of taking a certain medication such as how often and what dosage, or they may stop taking medication altogether because they no longer have a pharmacy nearby or are experiencing side effects. Once they have this data, pharmaceutical companies can leverage it to build journey and experience-based documents, allowing them to better track and manage patient adherence throughout their treatment.

Achieving access to timely, detailed data on a patient’s care and medication is essential to understanding how the patient’s treatment cycle is going following their initial service date and particularly at moments in time where patient behavior is most likely to waver. That way, healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies can use this information to provide timely and accurate support that helps patients overcome any pain points they’re experiencing in their recovery process or medication intake, ultimately achieving patient adherence.

Data-driven technology allows patient access teams an easy-to-use forum to communicate with patients and their providers quickly and directly, ultimately encouraging patients to continue their treatment towards better health outcomes. Adherence rates of 80 percent or more are necessary for optimal therapeutic outcomes, and adherence to most chronic medications is about 50 percent on average – further evidence of the compelling need for attentive and ongoing adherence support.

Driving Better Patient Outcomes 

Overcoming the obstacles of achieving patient access to care that they are adherent to, and at affordable prices, is best supported when pharmaceutical companies leverage technology solutions that connect the payer, provider, and patients.

By tapping into document generation capabilities and data-driven insights, pharmaceutical companies are empowered to ensure exceptional patient experiences such as helping patients access care and maximize adherence for optimal treatment outcomes. Streamlining processes required to provide care with technology also frees up bandwidth to spend more time on providing direct care as opposed to being bogged down with more administrative tasks.

The changing dynamics of the life sciences sector are motivating life sciences manufacturers to rethink their operations by streamlining processes, reducing costs, and improving customer communication. By effectively leveraging technology to achieve these operational goals and connect patients, payers, and providers, life sciences companies can provide equitable access to innovative treatments, address affordability concerns, and tackle non-adherence to medication regimens to drive optimal health outcomes for patients.