Non-Dispensing Pharmacies: Bridging the Gap in Specialty Therapy Access

It can be quite the process to get a patient started on a specialty therapy. Prior authorizations, affordability reviews, FDA-mandated safety program requirements, specialty pharmacy coordination, and more can all stand between a patient and treatment. Should the prescription get sent to the wrong pharmacy, or any other step break down, therapy can be delayed for weeks or abandoned altogether.

That’s one reason non-dispensing pharmacies (NDPs) have emerged. Unlike traditional pharmacies, non-dispensing pharmacies don’t fill or ship medication. Instead, they provide support around the medication journey, whether clinical, operational, administrative, or some combination of the three.

What is a non-dispensing pharmacy?

A non-dispensing pharmacy is a licensed pharmacy that supports the medication journey without actually dispensing medication. Typically, NDPs coordinate activities that need to take place between prescribing and dispensing, such as prior authorization coordination and benefits verification. Their goal is to help patients more easily start and stay on therapy.

What does a non-dispensing pharmacy do?

In the simplest terms, NDPs take care of much of the work required to help patients start therapy beyond the diagnosing and prescribing performed by healthcare providers and the dispensing performed by pharmacies.

That work can take a variety of forms. Some NDPs focus on clinical services, such as medication therapy management and adherence support–activities that are designed to help patients use therapies safely and effectively after treatment has begun.

Most commonly, however, NDPs focus on operational and administrative activities that take place before dispensing. Prior authorization coordination and affordability support are the two functions most often associated with NDPs. Both of these workflows can involve significant documentation requirements as well as coordination and follow-up.

Many specialty therapies also come with REMS requirements, which are FDA-mandated safety protocols that can require additional work including patient enrollment, provider certification, and monitoring labs or imaging. NDPs can coordinate these requirements so therapy can begin. For therapies that can only be dispensed by certain pharmacies, NDPs can also coordinate pharmacy routing to avoid rejected prescriptions and unnecessary delays.

What are the benefits of a non-dispensing pharmacy?

The main benefit of an NDP is helping more patients successfully access, start, and remain on therapy for as long as is needed. When fewer patients fall through the cracks, patients, providers, pharmacies, and manufacturers all benefit.

Benefits for providers and dispensing pharmacies

Today, the administrative work required to get a patient on therapy often falls on the healthcare provider and dispensing pharmacy.

Provider offices have to juggle patient care alongside prior authorization submission and affordability paperwork. Meanwhile, dispensing pharmacies may need to verify coverage, coordinate with payers, resolve missing information, and confirm REMS requirements, among other tasks.

With responsibility spread across multiple stakeholders, issues can be difficult to track and resolve. The vast majority of physicians, 95% to be exact, report that prior authorizations delay patient care. They also create a heavy administrative load that contributes to burnout and turnover across the healthcare system.

NDPs are designed to take much of this work off the plates of both providers and dispensing pharmacies. Because NDPs specialize in medication access workflows, they can often coordinate these activities more efficiently and consistently. Many integrate directly with electronic health records (EHRs) to automate prior authorization and affordability-related tasks, getting the necessary forms filled out correctly and submitted to the right place to reduce the delays caused by resubmissions and appeals.

Benefits for patients

For patients, the most obvious benefit of an NDP is faster access to therapy. NDPs typically handle prior authorizations, identify the most appropriate funding sources, and take care of routing the prescription to the appropriate dispensing pharmacy.

Many NDPs also give patients greater visibility into the status of their prescriptions. Instead of wondering whether paperwork has been submitted or the process stalled, patients can often track progress and receive updates. The transparency helps keep patients engaged through the access process and reduce the likelihood of prescription abandonment.

Benefits for manufacturers

Pharmaceutical manufacturers increasingly choose to work with NDPs because they can help increase therapy starts, especially for specialty therapies with complex access journeys.

Specialty therapies account for more than half of US prescription drug spending, though many of these serve relatively small patient populations and often come with complex access requirements and high co-pays. Therapy initiation is therefore critical. Barriers within the pharmacy network can reduce patient and provider satisfaction, ultimately impacting adherence and treatment outcomes.

NDPs help prevent that. Rather than leaving access coordination to provider or pharmacy teams that may only occasionally encounter the therapy, manufacturers can work with NDPs dedicated to understanding the specific processes required by that treatment. With knowledge of the common causes of prior authorization delays, available financial assistance programs, applicable REMS requirements, and the pharmacies authorized to dispense the medication, dedicated NDPs can navigate the access process more efficiently.

NDPs can also help manufacturers create a more consistent access experience by, for example, making sure a therapy is dispensed as written so patients receive the therapy as their provider intended.

In addition, NDPs often give manufacturers greater visibility into the access process: where patients encounter barriers, what benefits verification issues come up, how payer requirements affect the process, and more. These insights and metrics can help manufacturers make more informed decisions about their market access strategies.

Cinnamon: One Structured Access Workflow

The challenge in specialty therapy is often not prescribing the medication but navigating everything that happens afterward. As a non-dispensing pharmacy, Cinnamon Pharmacy helps simplify that process.

Rather than replacing the specialty pharmacy, Cinnamon Pharmacy sits upstream and serves as a centralized point of intake and access. It receives electronic prescriptions, coordinates prior authorization and affordability workflows, manages access requirements, and routes ready-to-fill prescriptions to the appropriate dispensing pharmacy once those requirements have been met. This helps reduce delays between prescription and treatment while giving manufacturers greater visibility into the patient access journey.

To see how Cinnamon Pharmacy can reduce access delays and provide insights to strengthen access programs, request a demo today.