Why Hub Services Data is Increasingly Valuable to Pharmaceutical Manufacturers

Accurate, transparent data is quickly becoming a critical piece of pharmaceutical manufacturers’ decision making processes. To ensure patients have fast, easy access to therapeutics, these pharmaceutical companies need full visibility into the patient journey. This enables them to identify constraints that could keep patients from initiating or staying on therapy, and take steps to remove those obstacles.  

As more pharmaceutical companies leverage hub services technology to improve patient access and affordability, the corresponding hub data is becoming increasingly valuable as a decision-making tool.

Better Data for Better Speed to Therapy

Ensuring patients have quick access to life-changing therapeutics is a critical objective for any pharmaceutical manufacturer. However, the very method of getting a patient on a new therapy can present obstacles that slow the process at a minimum; in the worst case, those delays can keep patients from initiating a therapy or discourage them from completing treatment.

When patients fail to start treatment in a timely way or stay on therapy for as long as it’s prescribed, their health outcomes suffer. In a 2021 survey by the American Medical Association, 34 percent of physicians reported that a prior authorization-related barrier had led to an adverse event for one of their patients. 

It’s reasons like these that pharmaceutical manufacturers have a strong interest in removing the administrative barriers that can jeopardize time to therapy. It’s also why manufacturers expect and value ready access to data that provides visibility into the patient journey. 

How Hub Services Data Aids the Process

Hub services technology speeds and streamlines the patient journey for the benefit of everyone involved. By taking on the administrative burden of tasks like benefit verification, prior authorization, patient enrollment, and financial assistance program management—and replacing inefficient, error-prone manual processes with efficient, automated workflows—hub services greatly speed a patient’s time to therapy and reduce the risk of therapy abandonment.   

When pharmaceutical manufacturers turn these critical services over to a trusted partner like CareMetx, they rely on data openness and transparency to ensure they know what patients are facing and can take any necessary steps to improve their experience. By using a hub services solution that provides good data transparency, manufacturers can gain insights into a wide range of factors that ultimately impact a patient’s speed to therapy and health outcomes. 

The CareMetx Digital Hub tracks crucial program data and reports on it via data feeds and robust dashboards, providing pharmaceutical manufacturers with a view into important metrics like the following:

• Patient phone call data, such as how quickly patient calls to the hub are answered; how long patient phone calls last, on average; how long patients spend on hold; whether calls are abandoned by patients, and if so, why; and whether call volume is highest on certain times of day, or days of the week, or times of the month

• Patient enrollment data, such as how many patient intakes and benefit verifications the hub is processing weekly and monthly; how long it takes to intake a patient, on average; how long it takes to verify a patient’s benefits, on average; and how those turnaround times are trending month-over-month

• Dispense data, such as which therapeutics have been dispensed by specialty pharmacies and at what volume (which is available for some drug products, depending on the specifics of the manufacturer’s contract)

With this data at their fingertips, pharmaceutical manufacturers can spot opportunities for improvement and make the most informed decisions about how to best respond. For instance, heavy call volume might point to a need to add staff in a targeted way, such as during certain times, days, or seasons. Or enrollment data might show that benefit verification turnaround times exceed the program's goals, confirming recent process adjustments.

Transparent information can also help manufacturers identify trends that need addressing. Let’s say the data show that the time it takes to answer a patient’s call has slowly trended up over the last few months. By spotting that pattern early, the manufacturer can work with its hub services partner to take proactive steps to reverse the trend. 

Finally, access to open, accurate data enables pharmaceutical manufacturers to ensure their hub services provider is meeting its contractual Service Level Agreements (SLAs). It’s an easy, effective way to monitor the hub’s operations, productivity levels, and overall program performance.  

How Hub Providers Like CareMetx Can Help

CareMetx understands that pharmaceutical manufacturers rely on transparent program data to make strategic decisions that impact patient adoption, speed to therapy, and eventual health outcomes. Our technology and business intelligence (BI) teams integrate program data from a variety of sources and develop comprehensive data models that give manufacturers open access to robust, accurate data on every aspect of their hub program.

CareMetx offers two different ways for manufacturers to obtain data about our program performance and the overall patient journey, giving each client the flexibility to choose the format and frequency they prefer. Some manufacturers opt to receive direct feeds of certain hub services data on a periodic basis. Others access standard and customized reports that our BI team generates using Tableau, a powerful data visualization tool that presents data in a pictorial format for easier analysis and better insights. Tableau reports can be pushed out periodically or accessed on a self-service basis via a login, offering clients the added flexibility and convenience of anytime, anywhere access. 

Continually improving data openness is an important strategy and a high priority for CareMetx. Our annual business intelligence roadmap always includes initiatives to improve data access and self-service, based on direct feedback from the many pharmaceutical manufacturers that rely on our hub services technology.

The CareMetx Digital Hub continues to transform patient support services, connecting a wide range of efficient, automated services to our platform and giving each pharmaceutical manufacturer the flexibility to optimize their program to suit their needs. We tailor both the program workflows and data reporting, delivering a fully customized solution that best meets each pharmaceutical manufacturer’s objectives.

To learn how our radically efficient hub services platform speeds time to therapy and provides the data transparency that’s crucial to informed decision making, contact CareMetx.