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Patient Support & Advocacy

Patient support programs have become a standard business practice to ensure patient access, however, life sciences, medical device and pharmaceutical companies must be cautious as regulatory scrutiny increases.

Patient Support & Advocacy

It is increasingly important that companies adopt proactive strategies to engage with patients and caregivers, and support them throughout the treatment journey. As a result, industry is partnering with independent patient advocacy organizations and providing financial support to raise awareness and improve patient outcomes.

    The high cost of novel therapies is often due to small patient populations from which companies must recoup large research and development investments and the considerable cost of education and adherence support often necessary to support innovative treatments. These costs often present significant barriers to entry that must be resolved for a product to be commercially viable.

    Patient support programs

    Patient support programs are increasingly a tool that companies deploy to overcome barriers of entry related to patient access and patient compliance. Patient access orientated programs usually include reimbursement support, funding support from independent charitable patient assistance programs and various degrees of coordination undertaken by the HUB and specialty pharmacy. Patient compliance or adherence programs usually include patient and caregiver education on therapies or lifestyle and sometimes leverage field-based educators.

    Ensuring patients have fair and equitable access to novel therapies is increasingly challenging. Prior authorization requirements from payers, which often include a thorough patient history, can be a barrier to patients accessing certain therapy. While the onus for managing the patient’s treatment resides solely with their physician, the responsibility for verifying and coordinating payer coverage places a significant burden on the provider. Modern patient support programs developed to deal with these challenges and typically start with reimbursement support.

    Services to help you build your patient support programs

    • Patient support program design
    • Outreach and funding support, including patient advocacy

    Building the program

    Patient support programs must be designed to bolster the unsupported components of the patient journey:

    • Patient identification through advanced diagnostic testing
    • Patient referrals to qualified treatment centers and physicians
    • Reimbursement support
    • Coordination of funding from independent charitable patient assistance programs
    • Prescription fulfillment through specialty pharmacies
    • Patient outreach for education and adherence

    Baker Tilly supports clients in designing patient support programs that sufficiently address patient access and adherence challenges, while also accounting for the risks and concerns raised by regulators.