Triplefin: How An Independent Service Provider Is Positioning for Growth

Today’s guest post comes from Tom Doyle, Executive Vice President Commercial Solutions at H. D. Smith / Triplefin.

Tom shares his views on how an ndependent patient services provider can enhance a manufacturer’s internal efficiency and the patient experience. He discusses patient assistance programs, automation, integration, and customer engagement.

To learn more about Triplefin’s full range of solutions, visit their booth at next week’s CBI Trade and Channel Strategies conference or visit www.triplefin.com.

Triplefin: How An Independent Service Provider Is Positioning for Growth
By Tom Doyle, Executive Vice President Commercial Solutions, H. D. Smith / Triplefin

Over the past few months, many mergers and acquisitions have significantly changed the market landscape for PBMs, payers, patient services, and wholesale companies. While the true impact will take many months to fully understand, there remains a strong push for service providers to create innovative and flexible solutions to help patients navigate this changing market environment.

H. D. Smith is part of this changing landscape, with the recent announcement of the sale of its drug division businesses to AmerisourceBergen. This sale will bring additional resources and scale to H. D. Smith’s core pharmacy customers, enabling them to remain competitive in the challenging independent pharmacy space.

You should know that Triplefin and H. D. Smith’s interest in its PSAO, Arete Pharmacy Network, were not included in the sale. Both companies will operate as independent organizations.

Triplefin fills a unique market position as an innovative, independent service provider. Triplefin’s automation of historically manual Hub processes is improving patient access and creating a new option for manufacturers. H. D. Smith has a long history of being a leader in improving health outcomes while controlling healthcare costs. Its ownership of Triplefin will continue in the patient services space.

Patient Assistance Programs: Evolving Models to Improve Access and Control Cost

Triplefin has a focus on patient assistance programs. These programs play a vital role in helping patients with limited or no coverage or resources obtain access to often life-saving medications.

While these programs have been well established for many years, innovation and automation in this area has lagged behind reimbursement and other Hub programs. There is an opportunity to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of patient assistance programs with a focus on three critical areas: automation, integration and people.

Automation

To improve the patient experience, programs need to move beyond web based portal enrollment to solutions that enable patients to receive real time eligibility information specific to the drugs they need.

With advances in real time eBV for both pharmacy and medical benefits, there are solutions that enable patient assistance programs to determine in real time if the patient has any coverage. Combining this with a real time soft credit check enables the patient to quickly determine if he or she qualifies for a support program. This approach:

• Eliminates many of the traditional manual activities
• Allows for faster access to the product
• Reduces program costs
• Offers an improved patient experience
• Streamlines tasks for the Hub team

Integration

The alignment of the front-end Hub and the back-end fulfillment provider is a key element of success for patient assistance programs. Coordination of activities that maximize the Hub’s ability to provide clean prescriptions to the pharmacy can reduce time-to-therapy and eliminate costly manual activities in the pharmacy.

Triplefin’s structure operates CompleteCare Pharmacy, a wholly owned subsidiary that focuses exclusively on patient assistance and other non-commercial dispensing programs.

People

One consistent element for success is providing every patient, caregiver, and healthcare provider (HCP) an exceptional experience each time they contact a patient assistance program. With automation driving improved internal work flows, Hub staff will be freed to spend more time on high-value customer engagement and less time on non-value added activities.

By driving efficiencies in hub services, Triplefin is helping the entire healthcare ecosystem improve costs and patient adherence.

To learn more about Triplefin’s full range of solution offerings, visit our booth at next week’s CBI Trade and Channel Strategies conference or visit www.triplefin.com .

---

Sponsored guest posts are bylined articles that are screened by Drug Channels to ensure a topical relevance to our exclusive audience. These posts do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Pembroke Consulting, Inc., Drug Channels Institute, or any of its employees. Publication of a sponsored post should not be considered an endorsement.

To find out how you can publish a guest post on Drug Channels, please contact Paula Fein (paula@drugchannelsinstitute.com).