Enhance patient care & increase practice revenue
Implementing & scaling medically integrated dispensing within a community oncology practice
Marin Cancer Care provides comprehensive cancer treatments to patients with oncology and hematologic malignancies throughout Northern California. In 2022, Marin Cancer Care began exploring how to expand their in-house services to offer patients a quicker and more convenient way to access their oral oncolytics and self-administered therapies prescribed by the practice’s 10 board-certified oncologists.
Marin Cancer Care’s leadership consulted with other oncology practices who were already dispensing and learned about the significant operational demands and business expertise required to successfully dispense. It became clear that an external partner to support both the launch of the program as well as day-to-day operations would be critical to Marin Cancer Care’s success.
Upon learning about House Rx’s turnkey approach to medically integrated dispensing, the team at Marin Cancer Care decided to partner with House Rx to implement and manage their own medically integrated dispensing program.
The Challenge
Routine delays in treatment, excessive paperwork, burdensome administrative tasks, shifting formularies, and severely high patient out-of-pocket costs collectively made a strong case for starting an in-house dispensing program at Marin Cancer Care. But the reality of figuring out how to launch a new service with the practice’s current resourcing and technology — and without disrupting day-to-day operations of the clinic — made it a daunting task.
The Marin Cancer Care team also recognized that launching a dispensing program was only half the battle. Maintaining and optimizing a high-quality dispensing program was equally important, and this would require expertise, staffing, and technology that did not currently exist within the practice. As a result, Marin Cancer Care looked to House Rx to fill these gaps and partner with the practice to both launch and grow the program over time.
- Dedicated Pharmacy team they know by name
- Fast and convenient access to medications
- Help with insurance navigation & financial costs
- Ability to pick up medications locally at the clinic
- Clinical pharmacy support on patient care
- Visibility into script status within the EHR
- Faster treatment initiation & improved adherence for patients
- Additional revenue
The Solution
House Rx worked with the Marin Cancer Care team to design an implementation plan and dispensing workflow tailored to the practice’s existing clinical operations. The implementation process was managed by House Rx and consisted of several different work-streams, including payer credentialing, establishing the practice’s drug ordering channel, securing the best available medication pricing, ordering equipment & supplies to outfit the onsite dispensary, training practice staff on new and adjusted procedures, and implementing new pharmacy management technology.
Once accepted into payer networks, Marin Cancer Care launched their medically integrated dispensing program within two months. The practice’s oncologists now send specialty scripts via the EHR to their in-house dispensary. From there, a team of House Rx pharmacists and care coordinators process the script to ensure patients quickly start their treatment, while coordinating closely with the provider team on any drug interactions or dosage changes.
House Rx’s Turnkey Approach to Medically Integrated Dispensing
Pharmacy professionals with decades of experience across independent practice and hospital settings to support daily operations
Proprietary technology platform connected to your EHR and designed specifically for medically integrated dispensing
Supply chain & business experts to support practice leadership in navigating distributor, manufacturer, and payer strategies
Built-in analytics track revenue, dispenses, capture rates, and PA turnaround times
*T stands for time-of-launch. T+ x represents a number of months from launch
**Average time to PA submission measures controllable time until submission. An average PA submission time of under 8 hours is preferred.
The Result
In the first six months of operating their medically integrated dispensing program, Marin Cancer Care received extremely positive patient feedback and the program experienced positive growth across several key metrics. In 2023, Marin Cancer Care’s dispensing program delivered over $5M in additional revenue after only 9 months of operations. In addition to the financial benefits, the practice is also seeing strong performance across patient care quality metrics, such as faster initiation of treatment, improved medication adherence, and lower prior authorization turnaround time. Physicians at Marin Cancer Care are also reporting increased satisfaction with the experience of having patients receive their medication through the practice compared to going through external specialty pharmacies.
By partnering with House Rx, Marin Cancer Care has increased income for their practice, reduced internal administrative burden associated with specialty medication prescribing, and provided their patient population with a faster, more convenient and cost-effective way to access their medications.
of additional revenue after only 9 months of dispensing
medication adherence compared to 70% of traditional pharmacies
patient Net Promoter Score compared to 69.2 for mail order specialty pharmacies
days to fill compared to 27 days for mail order specialty pharmacies
— Joel Criste, CEO of Marin Cancer Care
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