Optime Care President and CEO, Donovan Quill, byline article featured on October 14, 2020: “Patient-First Specialty Rx Solutions Expedite Trials, Enhance Compliance and Improve Experience.”
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, research to identify causes or develop strategies for prevention and early detection of rare cancers is highly challenging. Amid the current crisis, all of these challenges have been greatly amplified, especially around meeting protocol-specified procedures, such as administration, adherence and laboratory/diagnostic testing for clinical trials.
Rare cancer patients have encountered difficulties in accessing much-needed therapy adherence support. While many of these patients have struggled with reduced care, isolation and treatment adherence issues for most of their lives, they now face elevated stressors because they are immunosuppressed, conscious of infection and hypersensitive to viral threats.
Typically, oncology takes a physician-driven approach to therapies. However, for cancer patients—during the pandemic and beyond—a patient-first approach to specialty Rx is more effective, no matter what the disease. Now it is more important than ever to acknowledge the challenges posed for expediting clinical trials, enhancing compliance and improving the patient experience for the nation’s vulnerable cancer patients. Adopting a patient-first approach is the most optimal way to help patients and caregivers manage rare disorders and improve quality of life during this difficult time.
