Reducing Therapy Initiation Delays Through Cloud-Based Patient Service Platforms

Abstract

The time between when a medication is prescribed and when it is first administered is one of the greatest vulnerabilities in modern healthcare delivery systems, during which disease progression, complications, and adverse patient events often occur. Current patient service operations are predominantly split systems with manual processes and non-unified communication channels and deliver fragmented service to patients with meaningful delays and limited access to specialty medications requiring prior authorization and benefit verification. These processes also create important administrative burdens for both providers and patients. Physicians may spend hours working on clerical tasks related to insurance rather than seeing their patients. Cloud-based patient service platforms, which leverage automation, clever routing and real-time connectivity, present a compelling opportunity to improve efficiency, remove repetitive data entry, minimize communication and interaction loops, reduce the need for multiple disparate systems, and provide stakeholders with visibility and a more cohesive picture. Moving from on-premises solutions to the cloud results in a transformation of the healthcare delivery system and enables a wide range of functionalities that were not technically or economically feasible. The technologies include automated systems that verify benefits by linking to insurance companies using standard Application Program Interfaces (APIs), smart systems that manage cases effectively, real-time communication between insurance and pharmacy systems, systems that handle tasks as they occur, and cloud computing platforms that can quickly change their capacity and remain dependable during outages.