Three Digital Intake Strategies For Eliminating Patient Enrollment Forms

Today’s guest post comes from Adam Stotts, SVP of Customer Success at AssistRx.

Adam discusses how patients seeking to access specialty therapies can benefit from a digital intake approach. He then explains three ways that specialty pharmaceutical companies can use digital intake strategies to speed patient enrollment.

To learn about AssistRx’s digital intake solutions, download Digital Intake for Specialty Drug Programs: Q1 2024 Progress Report.

Read on for Adam’s insights.

Three Digital Intake Strategies For Eliminating Patient Enrollment Forms
By Adam Stotts, SVP, Customer Success, AssistRx

Innovations in patient access—whether government mandated or early adopter-driven—have primarily focused on benefit verifications (BVs) and prior authorizations (PAs). While BV and PA technology can drastically accelerate speed to therapy, enrollment forms and corresponding missing information continue to delay patient access.

For many specialty and specialty-lite products, enrollment form submission and processing through manual methods (i.e., faxing forms to the hub) can delay patient access by an average of 14 days. Digitized or electronic enrollment forms can reduce turnaround time to a few days, hours or even minutes. In many cases, technology has successfully “killed the fax,” but what about the enrollment form? What if there’s a way to overcome this barrier to timely patient access by eliminating the enrollment form entirely?

Generally, the information required for enrollment is available in the e-prescription. By utilizing this information, patients can be automatically enrolled into program services and kick off e-support services such as e-BVs, e-PAs and electronic income verification at the point of prescription—processing enrollments immediately. Without an enrollment form to complete, healthcare providers (HCPs) can remain entirely in their EHR or chosen workflow with zero steps outside of submitting an e-prescription.

Here are three ways life sciences organizations can use digital intake strategies to eliminate the enrollment form:

1. e-Prescription in the Pharmacy Claims Adjudication Process

Every patient utilizing commercial insurance will have their prescription submitted by the pharmacy for claims adjudication. Using the e-prescription provided, patients can automatically be enrolled into support programs without disrupting the HCP or pharmacy workflow. AssistRx’s Advanced Access Anywhere solution combines innovative Advanced eServices with a growing network of 61,000+ pharmacies to ensure patients gain rapid access to available support services while providing unprecedented visibility.

2. e-Prescription to a True Digital Hub

Manufacturers of specialty and specialty-lite products have found success eliminating the enrollment form by leveraging a true digital hub, like AssistRx’s CoAssist solution. HCPs simply e-prescribe to CoAssist Pharmacy from within their EHR, kicking off CoAssist’s proprietary Advanced eServices. By intaking the prescription as a covered entity, CoAssist can automatically trigger e-support services such as e-consent, e-BV, e-PA, e-enrollment and more without requiring HCPs to leave their workflow.

3. e-Prescription in iAssist

For patients requiring nuanced specialty support, therapy initiation platforms like iAssist can support real-time e-BVs, proactive submissions of e-PAs and electronic letters of medical necessity, real-time eligibility screening and enrollment into manufacturers’ affordability programs and more–all in one five-minute workflow. With iAssist, HCPs can enroll patients into critical support programs and make informed decisions at the point of prescription, as well as track their patients’ status throughout their therapy initiation journey.

ELIMINATING THE ENROLLMENT FORM: IN PRACTICE

One manufacturer of a multi-indication blockbuster drug that required program enrollments, BVs and PAs for its skyrocketing patient population was challenged with long turnaround times and a need to implement efficiencies that optimize program headcount. AssistRx deployed a digital intake strategy that enabled HCPs to e-prescribe from the EHR to CoAssist, AssistRx’s digital hub solution.

Using data in the prescription CoAssist was able to:

• Enroll patients into program services without an enrollment form.
• Trigger patient e-consent via text message, email, etc.
• Run Advanced BV (ABV) to return patient coverage and PA requirements in under 15 seconds.
• Initiate PA requests via Advanced PA (APA) with payer decisions returned in as little as minutes.
• Immediately identify—and enroll patients in, if rendered eligible—the appropriate affordability option based on their benefit plan.
• Route the prescription for dispense accordingly.

This digital intake approach eliminated manual, time-consuming faxes and calls. Fifty percent of PA decisions were returned within one hour and 70% were returned same day, eliminating the need to call the payer for PA status the next day. Additionally, patient outreach turnaround time decreased from 19 minutes to 12 seconds using text messaging. Ultimately, utilizing CoAssist increased speed to therapy from 12.2 days to 3.7 days, getting patients the mediations they need faster and enabling better results.

TAKE A CLOSER LOOK

We’ve compiled all our insights, case studies, and use cases for digital intake in one comprehensive e-book: Digital Intake for Specialty Drug Programs: Q1 2024 Progress Report

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