When a patient is diagnosed with a long-term illness, there are worries that go beyond the already overwhelming immediate concerns of mentally processing such a diagnosis and seeking treatment. Many patients require medications that are not available at a typical pharmacy. “These are patients with chronic disease states,” says Karen Kelley, RN, Therapy Management and Accreditation Lead Nurse for Home+ Specialty Pharmacy. “It’s not just cancer. There are inflammatory conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and ulcerative colitis or multiple sclerosis. These people may be going through this journey for their entire lives.”
Fortunately for patients in our region, Monument Health Home+ Specialty Pharmacy in Rapid City is there to help navigate the medicine aspect of those trying and ongoing circumstances.
That’s why at the 2024 National Association of Specialty Pharmacy (NASP) convention, held at Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee, Monument Health Home+ Specialty Pharmacy was recognized as the Trust & Confidence in the Pharmacist or Nurse Key Driver winner. The award is based on the results of the 2023 Patient Satisfaction Survey Program as administered to top specialty pharmacies in the United States by SullivanLuallin Group (SLG).
“There’s some really big players in the survey: Senderra, Johns Hopkins, UC Davis Health, Nebraska Medicine, St Luke’s,” says Karen. “The NASP puts out results for the satisfaction survey quarterly. And then at the end of the year, at their national convention, they recognize top performers for a patient’s high level of satisfaction. We joined this particular service two years ago and this is actually our first year of results. So it was for the calendar year of 2023.”
The recognition affirms that Speciality Pharmacy’s patients are very much satisfied with what is, by design, a very intentional and personalized effort. “We treat the patient, not the prescription,” says Leonard Petrik, Pharm D, CSP, Specialty Pharmacy Supervisor Pharmacist. “Unfortunately, there’s a lot of big, usually insurance-owned specialty pharmacies which patients are forced to use based on their insurance. We try to keep the costs at like at five or $10 — oftentimes zero — when they leave the pharmacy for medications that, on average, can be anywhere from, $1,000 a month up to $40,000 a month.”
“Nobody can ever pay that,” adds Karen. “And so the confidence and trust speaks to that. They know that we’re going to advocate for them. They know that we’re going to educate them, that we’re going to follow them through, make sure that they’re getting the medicine properly, and then we follow up with them periodically to make sure it’s working for them.”
That advocacy comes via nurses designated specifically for work at Specialty Pharmacy and who follow specific patients through specific disease states. “A lot of the other specialty pharmacies in the nation are completely mail order. They’re closed door. They don’t see their patients. We have the ability to talk to our patients face to face and train them with injectable devices, for example, because a lot of these patients have never injected a medication in their entire lives,” Karen says.
“We have folks that are in facilities, and we’re able to work with the nurses at the facilities to take care of those patients as well,” adds Leonard. “Our model and how we treat people, and the individualized care that we were able to provide is probably different from any specialty pharmacy in the world. We’re the only specialty pharmacy in a very large geographic area. The closest one is probably Sioux Falls, 350 miles away. We have couriers that we employ that take medications directly to patients’ homes. They go up all the way to North Dakota, over to Eastern Wyoming and hit places along the way, go down into the reservation areas, down into Nebraska, pretty much almost the whole western side of South Dakota. And we utilize UPS next day shipping for Arizona Snowbirds.”
“That’s the furthest state that we’re licensed in.” says Karen. “We want to keep it local, but we want to make sure that we’re meeting the needs of our local folks who are away for the winter.”
The personal touch and quality over quantity approach also applies to the certified pharmacy technicians that function as patient financial advocates and work with insurance companies on behalf of the patient or proactively set up refills. “A lot of the companies are selective about the pharmacies that they will allow to dispense their medications,” says Karen. “Sometimes you have to meet a certain mark to be able to access these medications for these patients. And so this kind of recognition helps us to get better access to both patients and medications, to be a better provider for the people in our community.”
“We’re very proud of what we provide to patients in this area. A lot of folks have never heard of a specialty pharmacy and have no idea what it is, until, you know, fortunately, we’re able to take care of them, but unfortunately that means they’ve got some sort of a disease state that’s scary and typically, expensive,” says Leonard.
“That’s a hard pill to swallow,” adds Karen. “And it’s definitely difficult to face alone because they’re being told that they have to take this medication that has this laundry list of possible side effects. So it’s nice to be able to provide a very important aspect of closeness and community and resources patients need that they otherwise may not have access to.”
Story: Kory Lanphear
Photo: Bob Slocum