A New Paradigm to Drive Patient Support Efficiencies
January 23, 2025
Kenneth Rodas of Hoffmann-La Roche Limited (Roche Canada) and other partners are streamlining PSP processes to give clinicians more time for what matters most: caring for their patients
What if, instead of having different patient support programs (PSPs) operating within their own silos, we could get them working together, to reduce the areas of overlap and make the processes more efficient? That’s the thinking behind ONE Team, a multi-manufacturer PSP model and collaborative effort spearheaded by Roche Canada. 20Sense spoke with Kenneth Rodas, Patient Services Manager at Roche Canada, about the rationale behind the program and its impact on clinicians and patients.
What is ONE Team and why was it put in place?
We observed that having separate PSPs can place a huge administrative burden on clinics delivering specialized treatment. To compound the problem, PSPs are becoming more complex because they’re creating additional touchpoints at the beginning of the patient journey. We felt it was important to rethink how things are being done. With the ONE Team model we’re trying to change the PSP paradigm and streamline the way that PSPs interact with HCPs, clinic staff, and patients. The ultimate goal within any given therapeutic area is for clinics to have a single point of contact for all the medications in their toolbox, regardless of which company manufactures them.
Why start with ophthalmology?
Ophthalmology was a natural choice because the therapeutic area has a high patient volume and is extremely fast paced. If we can reduce the administrative burden by even 30 seconds per patient visit, that really adds up over the course of a day – especially for physicians seeing a high volume of patients, as is often the case for ophthalmologists why may see upwards of 100 people a day. We felt that piloting the program in ophthalmology could give us a clear idea of how standardizing processes and increasing efficiencies can give time back to the HCPs and clinic staff, so they can more effectively look after their existing patients and treat new ones.
What is the value that an initiative like ONE Team can bring?
We always keep the patient at the forefront of everything we do. Expedited access to treatment and increased administrative efficiency are part of that. There are many therapeutic areas where patients move from product to product a lot. If we bring everything together under ONE Team, we eliminate many redundancies for the patient and prescriber, while also improving efficiencies and creating sustainability for our PSPs.
Ultimately, we hope the program will enable physicians to treat more patients and give both patients and clinic staff a more positive and seamless experience. Maximizing physician impact at the point of care also has downstream benefits to the healthcare system. There’s also a benefit to manufacturers because we're sharing resources and we're not operating separate models. It’s a new way of working together and, what we believe, is the future of the PSP model.
If we want to keep moving towards more cross-manufacturer initiatives like this one for PSPs, what do we need?
We need to enable the cross-functional teams that drive these initiatives, by networking and engaging with people at the patient services level. We should be thinking about not just why we’re doing this but also how we can get it done, with buy-in from compliance, commercial, and legal teams. Innovative solutions could be driven by the PSP service provider, as is the case with ONE Team, or by patient focused teams at manufacturers. There are several cross-industry networking initiatives that can help support as well, and others who are interested in exploring new ways of working in PSP should feel encouraged to be an active part of the community and bring new ideas to the table.
What’s next for ONE Team?
We’re working to leverage the learnings in ophthalmology to adapt them to other therapeutic areas, with the end goal of enabling a broader range of HCPs and clinics to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time on patient care. We see both a great need and a significant opportunity to transform the PSP landscape to further improve the patient, caregiver, and HCP experience.
“88% of clinics are ‘very satisfied’ with the ONE Team framework and believe that it has been a benefit to their clinic.”
Survey of the ONE Team pilot project
“This one point of contact ensures consistency for all of us and, in turn, allows us to streamline things for patients, giving them a more seamless experience.”
Response from a Clinic Manager in a survey of the ONE Team pilot project