Media Hub / November 13, 2023
OnePoint Patient Care President – Hospice Division Michael Porpora was featured in Hospice News and shared his insight on hospice pharmacy technology, staffing and industry trends.
As both a hospice pharmacy and PBM provider, what are the current trends you’re seeing in the industry?
First, there’s the unfortunate decline of local pharmacy providers, who are increasingly unable to continue supporting hospice care, leaving many hospices without a viable solution and scrambling to find medications for their patients. More and more we are seeing independent pharmacies turn away from hospice or outright close their businesses due to a variety factors, including increased regulatory pressures, and the rising costs of labor, delivery, and fuel — and all these challenges amid falling reimbursements.
Second, there’s a growing need for pharmacy-driven assistance in cost savings for overburdened hospices, which are grappling with staff shortages, surveys, expansion challenges and audits. They are seeking a PBM or pharmacy provider that can help them save costs and develop efficient medication management protocols for their teams. These are the two main issues that we’re observing.
What has OnePoint done to address these concerns?
We know that local, hospice-dedicated pharmacy is and will always be critical to delivering consistent, quality end-of-life care. Our company is committed to our mission of ensuring communities have a local and sustainable pharmacy dedicated to hospice. OnePoint is constantly enhancing the automation and technology in our pharmacies to best enable us to continue to offer our partners cost-effective medication dispensing and delivery services that are both sustainable and reliable.
Recognizing that hospices are often busy and understaffed, with a pressing need to save costs, we’ve introduced an exciting program called MyMetRx which will pinpoint cost-saving opportunities for every hospice. Think of the typical standard PBM reporting as a fitness gym, full of equipment. Those are great, but who has the time and where do you start in order to actually make an impact? MyMetRx is more like a personal trainer, guiding hospices to where they can save and working collaboratively to ensure that they see results. Our clinical pharmacists work directly with hospice leaders to identify and implement cost-reducing strategies, such as therapeutic substitutions. Working under goals set by hospice leadership, our team continuously reviews utilization data and provides bi-monthly, formatted reports to aid hospices in their Interdisciplinary Team (IDT) meetings and bolster performance.
Launched just over a year ago, MyMetRx has already helped some of our hospice partners save over 60% in targeted areas.
What’s on the horizon for OnePoint?
Technology definitely plays a crucial role in helping hospice clinicians and their patients, with EMR integrations being a key focus. Our application, OneConnectPoint, is designed to boost nurse efficiency, and we’re committed to enhancing it further. Currently, we’re excited to be developing a new AI clinical resource platform within OneConnectPoint. This AI tool contains a vast array of hospice clinical knowledge accumulated over decades by our clinical pharmacists, is designed to be extremely user-friendly and will be accessible to all OnePoint Patient Care partners and clinicians.
However, we recognize that technology by itself is not sufficient when it comes to providing truly quality and compassionate end-of-life care. We believe that the essence of quality patient care happens at the bedside, not solely through an app. OnePoint is dedicated to our local pharmacy model, and we will continue investing in and expanding to new pharmacies in markets that need our services the most. We are looking forward to what’s ahead.
Read the full article here.
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