To understand how to help ensure every eligible patient receives every available resource to afford their care, Annexus Health recently conducted two surveys of healthcare organization staff: one in collaboration with National Community Oncology Dispensing Association, Inc., and one in collaboration with Healthcare Advocate Summit. A total of 151 respondents shared their insights into how they currently manage patient financial assistance and access services, the challenges they face in the process, and what solutions would benefit their organizations and patients.
Key findings:
Managing patient assistance is a complex job, and traditional tools aren’t up to the task
According to the survey results, about 40% of assessments to determine whether a patient qualifies for financial assistance are conducted only after the patient’s insurance has paid its portion, and the patient’s out-of-pocket responsibility is communicated to them. This reactive approach to managing assistance can cause delays in patients receiving the funding, and the treatment, they need.
So, why aren’t all patients being assessed for financial assistance eligibility proactively? It’s certainly not a lack of dedication or competence on the part of healthcare organization staff. Instead, the problem lies in the many time-consuming administrative hurdles across the patient assistance journey, as well as in the limitations of the tools typically used to manage patient assistance.
A majority of survey respondents identified the following as “moderate” to “heavy” burdens they face in managing financial assistance for their patients:
- Lack of interconnectivity between their practice management system and life science or charitable foundation patient support programs, causing redundant data entry which can lead to errors and delay time to therapy
- Dozens of individual life science patient support program and charitable foundation web portals to navigate, leading to time-intensive enrollment processes
- Having to check disease fund websites multiple times a day to avoid missing the opportunity to enroll patients when funding opens up
- Limited insight into their organization’s financial performance as a result of not having a comprehensive view of patient assistance collections
- Lack of continuity in patient operations when a staff member is absent due to not having a centralized platform for colleagues to work from, which may result in patients not getting assistance in a timely manner
- Not having the headcount or tools needed to proactively work up every patient and manage assistance claims from end to end
Collectively, these “moderate to heavy burdens” can add up to a major administrative barrier to finding and securing assistance for patients, making it next to impossible to work up every patient for assistance, let alone work them up in a timely manner.
Moreover, most healthcare organizations are relying on a combination of tech-and non-tech tools that don’t fully meet their needs in managing patient assistance, including: spreadsheets (used by 63% of survey respondents), a software platform (used by 44%), fax machines (used by 36%), file folders (used by 35%), a paper/binder system (used by 25%), and sticky notes (used by 17%).
Staff who manage patient financial assistance are far from fully satisfied with their current tools and the processes those tools facilitate: the average satisfaction rating among survey respondents was a 5.7 out of 10.
A look at the financial assistance management capabilities healthcare organization staff say they want helps explain why their current tools are falling short, and, likely, why there are still so many patients who are not efficiently assessed for financial assistance.
Healthcare organizations need a solution that empowers them to secure financial assistance for more patients, in less time
In addition to identifying administrative challenges in the management of patient financial assistance, the surveys also sought to assess what solutions could best help healthcare organizations overcome those challenges. Asked how valuable the following capabilities would be to their organization on a scale of 1 (not at all valuable) to 10 (highly valuable), survey respondents rated all of the following an “8” or higher:
- Identify all available assistance options for a patient at the click of a button
- Have eligible patients automatically re-enrolled in life science and charitable foundation patient support programs to avoid disruptions in funding, without having to repeat the time-consuming enrollment process
- Receive automatic notifications of disease fund status changes in a timely manner
- Track patients waiting on funding to become available so that they can be enrolled as quickly as possible once funding opens up, rather than having to actively search again and again to see if any funding has become available
- Enroll patients in life science and charitable foundation patient support programs using a digital enrollment form that is automatically pre-populated with information pulled from their practice management system, accelerating the process by saving time on manual data entry while minimizing errors
- Manage all patient financial assistance activity across multiple sites of care from a central location, all in one platform under a single sign on
- Have access to on-demand analytics reports to help improve efficiency in managing patient assistance, ensure patients receive all available assistance, and discover opportunities to increase their organization’s revenue capture
- Search for and manage local assistance funds for eligible patients in their community alongside nationally available assistance options within a single platform
- Efficiently assign and manage tasks related to patient financial assistance
- Collect e-signatures as required for certain life science and charitable foundation patient support programs
- Have the support of trained, experienced staff with in-depth knowledge of revenue cycle and access service complexities to manage patient financial assistance on their organization’s behalf
Not all software platforms are created equal
Given the many burdens identified by the survey, as well as the many capabilities respondents say would benefit their organizations, a comprehensive software platform that enables all of the above is a natural solution.
Yet, of the 44% (66 survey respondents) who report they are currently using a software platform to manage patient financial assistance, less than a third (21 respondents) are using only a software platform. The rest continue to use some combination of the other tools mentioned above as well, especially spreadsheets.
The reluctance to rely on a software platform—or to rely fully on a software platform—is likely due to several different factors.
For one, some survey respondents may be using a platform that simply does not offer all of the features they need, and thus fails to optimize their organization’s efficiency. Others might be using a platform that has a poor UX design and/or limited training, preventing users—busy professionals who don’t have time to waste teaching themselves how to use a non-user-friendly platform or trouble-shooting frequent technical issues—from taking full advantage of its features.
Moreover, a software platform is only as valuable as the support that comes with it. Healthcare organizations deserve a patient financial assistance management platform backed by a customer service team that is both proactive and highly responsive so that they can focus on what matters most: their patients.
The availability of quality customer service, training, and technical support is critical to helping healthcare organizations overcome any anxiety around adopting a new technology, as well as to empowering them to be successful in using that technology to its full advantage.
In addition to anxiety about trading their familiar process for a new, technologically-driven one, healthcare organizations that have yet to adopt a software platform may be reluctant to do so because they doubt that the benefit to their organization and patients will outweigh the financial cost. In fact, a user-friendly, comprehensive platform that helps ensure every eligible patient receives all the assistance they qualify for financially benefits patients and healthcare organizations alike, delivering a substantial return on the investment.
Annexus Health: Comprehensive solutions for managing patient assistance
These survey results underscore the need for improvements to the way patient financial assistance is managed. Traditional tools and suboptimal software platforms that fail to comprehensively address the complex challenges involved in identifying, securing, and tracking available resources can prevent or delay patients from being assessed for assistance, leading to undue financial hardship for patients and creating barriers to them receiving their prescribed treatment. Healthcare organizations also feel the impact of inadequate patient assistance management tools in the forms of workflow inefficiencies and unpaid medical bills.
Annexus Health’s AssistPointⓇ software platform solves for the many administrative challenges identified in this survey to make managing patient assistance as easy and efficient as possible, empowering healthcare organizations with all the information and capabilities they need in one user-friendly place.
Unlike some other platforms, AssistPoint connects with the practice management system (or electronic health records or pharmacy management system—whichever each organization relies on as its “system of truth”), as well as with a growing number of patient support programs offered by life science companies and charitable foundations. This interconnectivity eliminates time-consuming manual processes and redundant data entry while minimizing errors and omissions and speeding up system communication.
AssistPoint users can:
- Identify all applicable assistance opportunities at the click of a button based on patient demographic information pulled directly from the practice management system
- Rapidly enroll patients in programs offered by Annexus Health’s life science and foundation partners using a standardized, largely pre-populated digital form*
- Track award fulfillment, utilization, and waitlist status for each patient without having to rely on spreadsheets, sticky notes, or file folders
- Analyze the impact of patient assistance on their patients and their organization’s financial performance via a comprehensive suite of on-demand reports
To ensure that organizations using AssistPoint, and their patients, are getting the most out of the platform, Annexus Health provides robust onboarding, ongoing training, and dedicated account management.
AssistPoint offers all the capabilities survey respondents identified as valuable, with the exception of one: expert staff to manage patient assistance on their organization’s behalf. To meet that need, Annexus Health offers AdparoⓇ, a tech-enabled service that provides all the benefits of AssistPoint, along with the expert support of trained professionals to remotely manage patient assistance. Adparo services are customizable based on each organization’s unique needs, from compensating for a lack of headcount or infrastructure, to freeing up administrative staff for other important tasks.
To learn more about what Annexus Health can do for your organization and patients, submit a contact form at annexushealth.com/contact and a member of the Annexus Health team will be in touch!
*For patient support programs that are not yet digitally integrated, AssistPoint users are presented with a link to quickly access the program portal to complete the enrollment process; they can then document the enrollment in AssistPoint for future reference and tracking.
