Since 2008, Michelle Thornton has been a Patient Care Coordinator at Troy, Michigan’s Pharmacy Advantage. She made the move from her previous position for the opportunity to grow professionally. There’s been growth all along the way, but since 2014, she’s seen her opportunities to serve patients expand faster and further than she’d ever imagined possible.

The bigger picture

“I work in the Clinical Department. I focus mainly on securing prior authorizations for new patients,” Michelle explains — and from 2014 through 2016, the number of prior authorizations Pharmacy Advantage submitted more than tripled over the previous two-year period.

By the numbers

To be more precise, Pharmacy Advantage’s prior authorizations increased from 9,196 between 2012 and 2014 to 28,675 from 2014 to 2016 — while its amount of approvals reached 22,791. Even more significantly, the amount of financial assistance Pharmacy Advantage secured for patients has increased nearly 500% — from roughly $637,00 between 2012 and 2014 to more than $3.1 million from 2014 to 2016.

It’s not just business. It’s personal.

For Michelle, those increases add-up to a lot of job satisfaction. “A big reason I made the move to Pharmacy Advantage was to help more patients. And in the private marketplace, you can’t help patients without securing the necessary financing to pay for the prescriptions they need.

“Like any specialty pharmacy, we serve a significant percentage of patients whose disease states require highly specialized medication and treatment. Even with good insurance coverage, copays are often simply beyond the financial means of so many patients we want to serve. It’s almost an understatement to say that DromosPTM has changed everything for us.”

A system for pharmacists. By pharmacists.

Pharmacy Advantage first implemented the DromosPTM software system after a three-year development period, during which virtually every member of the pharmacy’s staff contributed ideas and suggestions for improvement. Including Michelle. “Before DromosPTM, we didn’t really have an easy way to manage all the patients in the different disease states we serve. The prior authorization process was a lot more time-intensive, and we had no central tracking for patients receiving financial assistance.”

An invaluable database

“For that matter, we didn’t even have a centralized database of non-profits providing financial assistance for patients in need. Now the process is so much easier and faster, I can secure prior authorization and financial assistance for new patients in a fraction of the time it used to take me.

So many stories to tell

“Just recently I had a new patient whose copay was $6600 a month. With DromosPTM, their insurance company was already uploaded into the system. Once I saw what their copay was, I accessed our database of non-profits — and applied for financial support. We had prior authorization and financial assistance secured for that patient within three days. And I’m far from the only person here who’s enjoyed those kinds of results for patients with DromosPTM.”

More time to serve

While Michelle’s patient load today is significantly higher than it was just two years ago, “it’s so much easier to manage my workload. DromosPTM automatically manages so many of the details we had to record manually in the past. Now, I get to spend a lot more time actually interacting with, and serving, each patient.” What’s more, Michelle notes, her stress level is way down. “Oh, I still stress-out about things,” she admits with a smile, “but not about work!”