This article is sponsored by Enclara Pharmacia. In this Voices interview, Hospice News sits down with Ryan Krout, PharmD, VP, Clinical Management, Enclara Pharmacia to talk about the role of a clinical manager at Enclara and the impact clinical managers have on quality, compliance and utilization. He highlights the key data insights that Enclara’s hospice partners find most useful with respect to utilization patterns, especially across multiple locations. And he also explains how Enclara’s benefits reach far beyond hospice agencies alone to make a positive impact on patients and families.
Hospice News: What career experiences do you most draw from, in your role today?
Ryan Krout: Our clinical pharmacist management program works with hospice leadership to improve quality and control costs, so it’s very much a hybrid role of clinical account management, strategy and patient care. My path to this role reflects that, from starting out as a retail pharmacist to account management for a large PBM and leadership in hospital and long-term care pharmacy operations. Each of those experiences has helped me grow our program over my four-plus years at Enclara.
Talk about the role of a clinical manager at Enclara and the impact clinical managers have on quality, compliance and utilization.
Our Clinical Management department is comprised of pharmacists who serve as clinical and business consultants. We work closely with hospice clinical and executive leadership. Our focus is on analyzing medication utilization, including prescribing and ordering trends, to identify areas where we can help hospices achieve greater efficiencies and provide the best possible patient care.
Education is a crucial factor for us. We collaborate with hospice leadership to improve clinical practices and enhance caregiver and patient support. We continuously strive to improve the educational programs and initiatives we offer.
How has your clinical management program evolved since you started with Enclara?
We have increasingly leveraged data analytics and benchmarking to drive continuous improvement for our clients. With hospice being such a small part of the larger health care system, clinical leaders are often having to base decisions on mostly qualitative and anecdotal evidence. As a market leader, we are able to aggregate medication utilization data within the hospice space to offer truly quantitative, statistically significant insights. That enables us to develop evidence-based innovations to support patients, caregivers and hospice organizations.
What data insights do your hospice partners find most useful with respect to utilization patterns, especially across multiple locations?
It has been an interesting journey, and over the past year, we have been able to look at our data on a more granular level and develop industry benchmarks that account for hospice size, population served and regional differences. So then, when we analyze the medication utilization of a hospice organization, we can really contextualize the trends we’re seeing. For example, we may look at medications with limited benefits at end-of-life and if the hospice is prescribing those for longer periods than their peers, we can look into why that might be.
We can also identify any outliers within the organization, which may highlight a need for further education or training. As hospices grow, it can be harder to ensure all care is consistent with the goals and values of the organization, and that is an area where hospices really count on us.
Where does Enclara’s clinical management program deliver the greatest value, and what differentiates it from what other PBMs are offering?
Our value proposition is based on the two areas we’ve discussed so far: data analysis and clinical education. As far as I know, no other PBM has the breadth or depth we do when it comes to hospice data and benchmarking. After we show an organization its medication utilization, we use data to identify areas for improvement or change, and then it is up to the organization to prioritize where to intervene. After that, we bring in education initiatives, tools and support to help organizations make changes in those areas and there, again, is where we stand out. Enclara has assembled what is probably the largest and most experienced group of hospice pharmacists anywhere. The level of institutional knowledge here going back to the first pharmacies to specialize in palliative care is just unparalleled.
Looking beyond the benefits that Enclara provides the hospice agencies, how does Enclara make a positive impact on patients and families as well?
There are two pieces to that. No.1 is that as pharmacists, it is our responsibility to help develop and communicate clinical best practices to support prescribers in providing the safest, most effective symptom management. The second part is education and support to empower nurses to have those challenging conversations with patients and families when it comes to things like deprescribing. That includes developing tools to educate patients and caregivers about how to administer medications and understand what they do. We recognize that these conversations are difficult, and their outcomes determine the overall quality of the hospice experience for both the family and patient.
Finish this sentence: “In the hospice industry, 2023 will be the year of…”
…reflection and reassessment.
Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
As the nation’s leading pharmacy services provider and PBM for the hospice and palliative care community, Enclara Pharmacia ensures timely and reliable medication access in any care setting through a comprehensive network of retail and institutional pharmacies, a national patient-direct dispensing program and dedicated inpatient services. To learn more, visit www.enclarapharmacia.com.
The Voices Series is a sponsored content program featuring leading executives discussing trends, topics and more shaping their industry in a question-and-answer format. For more information on Voices, please contact [email protected].