Specialty Pharmacy Next: Focus on Distribution Processes, Data Utilization, New Drugs, and More

In this roundtable, cochairs of Specialty Pharmacy Next, Chris Fausel, PharmD, MHA, BCOP; Erin Hamai Tom, PharmD, APh, MBA, BCACP; and Ryan Nix, PharmD, MMHC, gather to discuss pertinent topics on the agenda such as white and brown bagging practices and data usage for program growth, as well as who may benefit most from attending the meeting.

Read the full transcript:

Dr Chris Fausel: Welcome everybody. My name is Chris Fausel. I'm an oncology pharmacist specializing in precision medicine at Indiana University Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center in Indianapolis, Indiana. 

I'm here to talk today about an educational event that is going to take place over the next couple of months called Specialty Pharmacy Next. I have a couple of my colleagues with me who are cochairs. Dr Tom, would you be kind enough to introduce yourself?

Dr Erin Hamai Tom: Of course. Hi everybody. My name is Dr Erin Hamai Tom. I currently practice at UC Davis Health, which is based in Sacramento, California. I have a very large staff of pharmacists who practice in clinic alongside the providers. Our focus is the clinical management with the specialty pharmacy emphasis.

Dr Fausel: Awesome. And Ryan, would you be kind enough to introduce yourself?

Dr Ryan Nix: Absolutely. My name's Ryan Nix. I am the senior director of operations for the specialty pharmacy program at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Similar to Dr Tom, we use an embedded model of clinical pharmacists at our facility. In my role, I am charged with overseeing the strategic opportunity development to ensure continued growth within our specialty pharmacy program while providing oversight to the clinical and business operations developments to meet the needs of both our internal and external stakeholders. Happy to be here today.

Dr Fausel: Thank you both, and I appreciate that you're both here joining me today. Let’s get started by talking about what this continuing education event is. 

It's called Specialty Pharmacy Next. It is going to be held twice: once in August, and repeated in November. So if you can't make one, you can hit the other.

If you have a very busy schedule because you're working very hard in a specialty pharmacy, and you don't have time during the day to get to all the lectures that are going to be provided, there's an option for you to get a premium package, so you can go back and review any of the lectures for up to 3 months after the presentations are given. There’s a little bit of flexibility that's kind of worked into this. 

So, who should be attending? In terms of what we're trying to achieve, we wanted to make this an educational event that hits a broad audience in pharmacy. Dr Tom, who do you think could really benefit from this type of program?

Dr Tom: I think anybody involved with specialty pharmacy and specialty medications should be attending this event. This includes our pharmacists who may work on the dispensing side in specialty pharmacies, as well as our clinical colleagues that practice alongside providers. 

Pharmacy technicians would definitely gain a lot from this, as well as those who are involved with research. I also think those who are on the executive side of specialty pharmacy could benefit from a lot of the topics that we're going to be discussing, our colleagues in purchasing, and those in supply chain. And, of course, anybody who's interested in a future of specialty pharmacy, whether it be current fellows, residents, and interns, should definitely tune into for our presentations.

Dr Fausel: Wonderful, thank you. Now, I'm not a person who works in specialty pharmacy, but I'm a consumer of specialty pharmacy medications because in our molecular tumor board, we're constantly making recommendations to our specialty pharmacy for drugs that are targeted for oncology. Let's talk about the variation in the different sorts of lectures that are going to be given during this program.

Dr Nix, would you be kind enough to run through the agenda on both day 1 and day 2 for this conference, for folks that may be interested in attending?

Dr Nix: Yeah, absolutely. I'm really excited about this agenda because I think there's a great range of topics available that are some of the leading discussions being had in specialty pharmacy at this time. 

On day 1, we have mitigation strategies for white and brown bagging mandates. We have some updates in oncology specialty pharmacy. We have a session on understanding your data, which is becoming increasingly important in specialty pharmacy, for measuring the impact of patient outcomes within your practices. To end day 1, we have a really interesting topic on transforming clinical care and operations management using digital solutions and novelty specialty pharmacy technology services. 

Day 2 doesn't disappoint either, because we have a nice range of topics that starts with improving oral adherence and compliance through comprehensive monitoring programs. Next up, we have some updates in autoimmune specialty pharmacy, which has been a blossoming therapeutic area recently. Then we'll go into more topics related to administration of specialty pharmacies. We have two really interesting topics to round out the day 2 sessions, the first being in specialty pharmacy accreditation, and then one on incoming regulatory and policy updates.

Dr Fausel: Great. Thank you very much. Why should the audience be excited about this program? Well, the bottom line is that there is something for everybody. 

As cochairs, we were very intentional about creating an agenda where we could hit a wide audience and give people that practice in slightly different areas something meaningful when they participate in this program. For me personally, as a card-carrying oncology pharmacist, I'm very excited about the updates in oral oncolytic agents. 

But something else that lies under the radar in your typical continuing education programs—there’s going to be a dedicated session on promoting adherence. We all can gain from that. We all can do a better job at promoting oral adherence. Of course, that's a critical aspect of providing care in specialty pharmacy. 

Dr Tom, what are you excited about in terms of the agenda for this program?

Dr Tom: I think one of the hot topics that we've been working through most recently are some of the challenges to white and brown bagging, especially in an academic medical center. This has been such a challenge for us. It's very time-consuming. It's very hard to navigate, and it has huge impacts on our patients. So I'm really excited about our session on the mitigation strategies for white and brown bagging.

My background is in immunology, so I used to practice in both GI and rheumatology. There's a lot of growth in that area. There’s a ton of biologics that have come to the market. Obviously, on the horizon, we have a lot of changes with biosimilars that are going to be coming. With autoimmune in general, it'd be nice to have some updates in that area, as some may not practice as heavily in that as I have.

Dr Fausel: Great. Thank you very much. Dr Nix, what are you excited about?

Dr Nix: One thing that's been very near and dear to our heart in our practice setting has been understanding how to leverage data for better patient outcomes. I'm really excited about this session. I think that electronic health record systems have come a long way, and data's becoming more readily available, particularly for health system pharmacies, which have really rich amount of data. 

I'm looking forward to this session because it talks a lot about how one system in particular is leveraging data to drive clinical care and improve health outcomes for their patients. It will also review how to leverage this data to communicate your value story as a specialty pharmacy to both your internal and external stakeholders. 

As for the other sessions that I'm excited about, of course, I'm really involved in the administration of a specialty pharmacy. So we have a nice discussion on specialty pharmacy accreditation. Accreditation, as we all know, is becoming increasingly important to make yourself stand out as a specialty pharmacy, to show you have expertise in navigating the numerous challenges in this field, as well as mitigating the number of barriers that patients may face in obtaining specialty pharmacy medications. I’m really excited to hear this session in which our accredited specialty pharmacy administrators will give insight on their unique journeys through the accreditation process and share how to develop and manage an accreditation program, as well as how to best prepare for the future of accreditation needs.

Finally, I think one of the biggest challenges in specialty pharmacy is the increasing number of regulatory and policy updates across a number of different areas. This is a landscape is constantly shifting with frequent policy and regulatory changes. So I'm really looking forward to that session. That'll give us some legislative updates and insight into how these are going to impact the industry as well as patient care in our area.

Dr Fausel: Great. Thank you very much. Look, the bottom line is this discipline is just over a decade old and the ground is moving underneath our feet very, very rapidly. So this educational program provides a little bit of everything, whether you're just starting out in this journey of participating in specialty pharmacy; or perhaps you're charged with creating a specialty pharmacy program at your institution; or if you're someone like Dr Tom or Dr Nix who's very experienced in this area, but is continuing to work to make their program achieve higher levels. We're very excited to be able to bring this to you. 

As I mentioned, again, Specialty Pharmacy Next going to be offered in August as well as November. We look forward to seeing everybody when we talk about this in August. Thank you for your time.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.