Addressing Gaps in Access: Strategies to Optimize Your Prescription Journey

Today’s guest post comes from Catherine Wood Hill, SVP of Marketing at PHIL.

Catherine reviews the prescription lifecycle from the perspectives of patients, providers, and manufacturers. She explains how manufacturers can support patients with clear comunication about their prescriptions. Catherine then outlines five strategies to help providers have more informed conversations with patients.

To learn more, watch for PHIL’s on-demand webinar: Improving Access, Coverage, and GTN with Digital Hubs.

Read on for Catherine’s insights.

Addressing Gaps in Access: Strategies to Optimize Your Prescription Journey
By Catherine Wood Hill, SVP Marketing, PHIL

SIMPLIFYING THE PRESCRIPTION LIFECYCLE

The prescription journey is notoriously challenging to navigate.

In 2023 alone, 98 million new scripts and over half of the prescriptions for recently launched therapies went unfilled, and less than a third of patients stayed on treatment for a year–mainly due to high out-of-pocket (OOP) costs and utilization management hurdles. Healthcare providers are often limited in their ability to help, with the vast majority reporting that their patients suffer from care delays or denials due to burdensome prior authorization (PA) processes. While pharmaceutical manufacturers spent over $84B over the last five years to support patient access, the struggle to balance medication access and brand economics continues.

Simplifying the prescription lifecycle starts with understanding and addressing the differing needs of patients, providers, and brand stakeholders:

• Patients expect a simple consumer experience that clearly defines how much their medications will cost and when they will receive them with regular status updates.

• Healthcare providers want a simple process where the steps to get their patients are on therapy are clearly defined. They require visibility into the steps needed to initiate therapy for their patients, including expected timelines, costs, and available support programs.

• Manufacturers need comprehensive understanding of all hurdles patients are facing accessing their brand and actionable insights to help more patients get on therapy.

For a deeper dive on this topic, this playbook offers data-driven strategies for improving patient, provider, and program outcomes to drive commercial success in 2025 and beyond.

SUPPORT PATIENTS WITH CLEAR COMMUNICATION ABOUT THEIR PRESCRIPTIONS

Providing clear, up-front prescription status and cost information is crucial for helping patients successfully navigate their healthcare journey. When patients receive reliable and consistent communication about their prescribed therapies, they can make better treatment decisions. This approach helps patients proactively address cost concerns and gain insight into prescription status, which can lower the overall likelihood of medication abandonment or nonadherence.

Pharmaceutical manufacturers that recognize the importance of clear and consistent communication for patients are implementing alternative channel solutions to empower patients with greater insight into their medication access experience.

These solutions allow patients to:

• Monitor their prescription status in real time
• Know their out-of-pocket costs up front
• Identify any back-end issues that are stalling fulfillment
• Proactively explore patient support and affordability programs

By providing this level of insight, manufacturers can help prevent delays in treatment, reduce therapy abandonment, alleviate financial stress, and deliver a more satisfying healthcare experience for patients.

ENGAGE HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS WITH IN-WORKFLOW TOOLS AND INFORMATION

Time-constrained providers want to focus more on patient care and less on administrative work. Pharmaceutical manufacturers can better engage healthcare practices by providing them with up-to-date information and tools to enhance treatment access and simplify prescription workflows.

The following strategies can help providers have more informed conversations with patients about therapy options, costs, and potential access barriers while proactively addressing affordability and adherence concerns:

1. Implement a digital hub into the prescriber’s existing workflows that offers:

• Real-time prescription status updates
• Automated prior authorization (PA) initiation and tracking
• Patient-specific benefit information, including coverage criteria and out-of-pocket costs
• Electronic enrollment in patient support programs

2. Facilitate more informed HCP interactions by equipping field teams with:

• PA submission rates and approval statistics for specific payers
• Average time to therapy initiation
• Prescription abandonment rates and reasons
• Comparative data on formulary placement across different insurance plans

3. Offer workflow optimization tools, such as:

• Pre-populated PA forms with commonly required clinical information
• Integration with EHRs for seamless prescribing
• Automated alerts for prescription status changes or required actions

4. Help providers support patients with:

• Educational materials tailored to their patient population
• Copay assistance program information and easy enrollment options
• Adherence monitoring tools that offer actionable insights

5. Facilitate informed decision-making by:

• Sharing payer-specific formulary information and step therapy requirements
• Providing comparative efficacy and safety data relevant to payer coverage criteria
• Offering cost-effectiveness analyses to support coverage appeals when necessary

DRIVE BRAND VALUE WITH DATA AND INSIGHTS

For pharmaceutical manufacturers, visibility across the entire prescription journey is a game-changer. Data and insight into prescription trends at the patient, provider, and territory level allows manufacturers to proactively identify patient access roadblocks and quickly adapt their strategies to decrease prescription abandonment and improve medication adherence.

Through an alternative channel partner, brand teams can gain insight across the medication access lifecycle. They will be equipped with the right metrics to get an accurate picture of what is happening throughout the prescribing process and how it impacts HCPs and patients. Whether a PA has stalled due to missing data or the provider simply has not submitted the completed form, the field team can proactively assist a provider before frustration sets in and expedite the patient's access to therapy.

This proactive approach improves medication access and enables manufacturers to optimize patient support initiatives. Brand teams can provide more personalized assistance by understanding the specific challenges patients face throughout their journey. As patients experience smoother access to medications and better support, they are more likely to stay on therapy and advocate for the brand. For manufacturers, this goes beyond short-term sales growth by building patient trust and long-term brand value.

DRIVE ACCESS WITH CONFIDENCE

Optimizing the prescription journey benefits patients, providers, and brand stakeholders. If you’d like to learn more about enhancing your current brand program, watch this webinar for an in-depth look at how digital hubs can transform your access strategy.

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The content of Sponsored Posts does not necessarily reflect the views of HMP Omnimedia, LLC, Drug Channels Institute, its parent company, or any of its employees. To find out how you can publish a guest post on Drug Channels, please contact Paula Fein (paula@DrugChannels.net).