Citus Health Blog

A new report from SmartBrief and Citus Health, takes an in depth look at how the competitive landscape, demand for data and COVID-19 challenges are the driving forces behind the increase in specialty pharmacies adoption of virtual care technologies.

“There’s an app for that” is something we never heard before the iPhone was introduced in 2007. Today, we hear it all the time because innovators built small, purpose-built, apps that solve specific problems. Because not all users have the same problems, apps exist for different solutions. We don’t replace our phones every time we want to do something new, we just add an app, and our phones get new functionality – that’s the “App Store” innovation model.

Specialty pharmacies have long fulfilled a critical need by providing remote support for severely ill patients who require in-home medication. With the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, specialty pharmacies found the spotlight on some of the challenges they still face with the real-time, virtual patient support and care team collaboration required to ensure timely refills, contactless delivery, and the data needs to prove efficacy.

For the past decade, hospice providers have been investing heavily in modernizing their clinical systems, care pathways and staff technologies. However, most hospice providers are falling short when it comes to what really matters to those who make the ultimate decision on choice of provider and serve up hospice satisfaction scores – the hospice consumer. Today’s hospice consumer is the family caregiver or POA, increasingly a tech savvy daughter or son of the hospice patient.

In 2020, we have reached an inflection point in care delivery.  Close collaboration in healthcare among all stakeholders -- internal clinical and non-clinical staff, referring physicians, external partners, and family caregivers -- has never been more important. 

We thought we would recap three of the most important themes that surfaced at NAHC FMC20. Telehealth was front and center with Bill Dombi, President of NAHC, citing it as the #1 advocacy priority in 2020.   What surprised us is a widespread call to look beyond telehealth to engage patients, physicians and clinicians like never before as the future of care delivery continues to take shape.

There’s No Going Back- Virtual Patient Support is Here to Stay

In a recent podcast from the National Association of Specialty Pharmacy, Executive Director, Sheila Arquette hosts Melissa Kozak, RN, CRNI, CEO, Citus Health and Meagan Sampogna, COO, BioMatrix Specialty Pharmacy for an engaging discussion about the companies partnership and the innovative solutions needed to deliver a new standard of digital patient support for specialty pharmacy patients during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. 

The specialty pharmacy environment has changed in a matter of weeks. Phone waits are longer with staff working remotely; patients are concerned about refills and shortages of their critical medications; contactless delivery has become a necessity due to patient and family member concerns about potential infection. 

Uncharted Territory: Using Technology to Successfully Navigate the COVID-19 Pandemic

As we progress through this COVID-19 crisis, providers are now anticipating a “new normal” and considering solutions that enable secure virtual care team collaboration and critical patient family engagement.