In the early 1990s, when specialty pharmacy was in its infancy, there were few systems and guidelines in place for treating chronic conditions. Fast-forward to today, and this booming industry continues to see incredible growth each year. With the rapid development of new therapies, and the increasing ability to diagnose and personalize treatment regimens, the industry increasingly relies on evidence-based standards and protocols for consistent care, increased value and outcomes.

For specialty pharmacies that want access to payer coverage and limited-distribution products, accreditation in today’s market is virtually mandatory. The top agencies providing this critical accreditation include the Utilization Review Accreditation Commission (URAC), the Accreditation Commission for Health Care (ACHC), and Joint Commission (JCHAO).

Specialty pharmacies can help to streamline operations and ensure consistent quality by adopting technology that’s designed to meet and maintain accreditation standards. Keep reading for some key accreditation components, and how CPS' state-of-the-art therapy management platform TherigySTM can help.

URAC’s Accreditation Requirements

According to URAC’s website, here are some of the deciding qualities of an URAC-accredited specialty pharmacy (see each agency’s website for a comprehensive list):

• Enacting policies and procedures that ensure that patients have appropriate drug and medication access
• Maintaining methods that ensure customer satisfaction
• Protecting consumer health information
• Enacting policies and procedures that ensure drug safety protocol adherence
• Following a logical blueprint for maintenance, management, and reporting
• Meeting rigorous guidelines for turnaround time and accuracy of dispensed prescriptions
• Providing a patient-centered management strategy, including care coordination, education and communication, and patient responsibilities and rights
• Ensuring that customer service centers are timely and performant, including time to answer phone calls
• Regularly reporting mandatory performance measures to the agency

TherigySTM was designed with these features in mind, helping specialty pharmacies to receive accreditation while improving overall operations and performance.

TherigySTM Security Triangle

Healthcare organizations face devastating consequences when they’re subjected to hacking, fraud, and unauthorized access, use, or disclosure of data.

TherigySTM takes an uncompromising approach to data security, focusing on three primary controls of healthcare technology security breaches:

1. Network security: Dedicated private cloud architecture ensures the security of all applications hosted within the network
2. Application security: A multi-layer approach to identify, remediate, and prevent security vulnerabilities for each piece of software produced
3. Organizational security: Secured internal workstations and mobile devices, employee training for interacting with and handling data, and comprehensive business continuity (BC) and disaster recovery (DR) plans at CPS' headquarters and data centers

TherigySTM Care Plans

TherigySTM allows your specialty pharmacy to build and customize care plans and assessments that help to:

• Optimize the care journey for individual patients with risk scoring triggers for clinical interventions based on medication and drug safety protocol adherence data
• Ensure that patients have timely, accurate, and thorough access to care, as well as communication and education regarding their treatment, rights, and responsibilities
• Allow your specialty pharmacy to maintain organization without compromising quality or the health and satisfaction of patients

TherigySTM and TherigyInsights Reporting

CPS provides a large library of preconfigured and customizable care plans and other templates that generate the precise information required by accreditation agencies, payers, manufacturers, prescribers, and patient assistance programs (PAPs). The platform also offers a number of integrations, allowing specialty pharmacies to interface with major dispensing systems and extract normalized data to use within their own unique data warehouses.

If you’d like your therapy management platform to assist with earning and maintaining accreditation, all while optimizing operations and improving patient outcomes, contact us to learn more about TherigySTM.