Infusion Clinics (ICs) face a delicate balancing act. They must strive for operational excellence while simultaneously navigating the realities of competition, patient care challenges, and compliance requirements. It's a difficult challenge, and as ICs adapt to evolving demands, there's a growing need for pharmaceutical manufacturers to step up with tailored support.
From streamlining medication access to advocating for policy changes, manufacturers can significantly impact how ICs manage patient experience, operational efficiencies, and compliance. Helping ICs to improve productivity should be important to manufacturers due to the shared goal of ensuring patients have access to their medications and stay on them for better treatment outcomes. And both providers and ICs likely prefer to work with manufacturers that provide additional support. Here are actionable recommendations for ICs that can foster collaboration, enhance clinic performance, and ultimately improve patient outcomes.
1. Focus on the patient experience
Specialty pharmacies and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) sometimes require medications to be processed elsewhere, creating competition for ICs. This results in lost margins to the IC, who can counter this where possible by hiring pharmacists for in-house pharmacy.
ICs can draw patients to their facilities by focusing on improving the patient experience and going the extra mile by offering "white glove" treatment. This includes finding ways to reduce wait times, assisting with travel to and from appointments, quickly setting up translators when needed, and providing private rooms -- specially tailored for families and children. Clinics that excel at noticing body language cues and troubleshooting problems patients may not openly share also stand out.
Additionally, creating a comfortable atmosphere and simply being a good human can go a long way. Recognizing the patient experience -- often filled with intimidation, needle sticks, long appointments, and boredom -- helps ease fears and builds trust.
There are additional measures ICs can take to further improve the patient experience:
Ensure Compliance
Ensuring compliance involves having the right external support to maintain education (HIPAA included!), validate processes, and monitor adherence to checkpoints. Getting any of these aspects wrong can have significant financial implications.
The Balance Between Ideal and Practical Operations
For those directly involved either working with or at ICs, much of this may seem obvious. However, what stands out was the constant tension between striving for an ideal operation and making the best of current resources. Change can be daunting and may require a step back before progress is made.
Here are suggestions for how pharmaceutical manufacturers can better support Infusion Clinics:
Facilitate Networking and Best Practice Sharing
Tailor Solutions to IC Needs
By implementing these recommendations, even in part, pharmaceutical manufacturers can play a crucial role in enhancing the effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability of Infusion Clinics, ultimately leading to better patient care and outcomes. Both providers and ICs could benefit from this added support, while also putting the manufacturer in a more competitive position from those that do not have this partner mindset.
About Patty Trainor
Patty Trainor is a Senior Director at leading market research firm KS&R. Patty has dedicated 20+ years in the healthcare space and in understanding stakeholder influences and outcomes. She is also KS&R's Pharmacy SME with experience interviewing buyers and executives in IDNs and Pharmacy Chains to understand corporate initiatives impacting HCPs and Pharmacies in respective systems. In addition, she has led hundreds of qualitative and quantitative research studies across a multitude of stakeholders to understand drivers behind purchasing/prescribing/dispensing practices, patient motivators, and more to shed light on the patient (and prescription/vaccines) journey.