Asembia AXS25: Addressing Health Equity in Specialty Pharmacy Services

In an interview with Pharmacy Times®, Shawn Griffin, MD, president and CEO at URAC, discussed the vital role of leadership support in the successful implementation of health equity programs within specialty pharmacy, ensuring these efforts are recognized as fundamental organizational values. He highlighted his presentation, “Advancing Health Equity in Specialty Pharmacy Care,” which he shared at Asembia's AXS25 Summit.

Griffin emphasized the importance of analyzing data to identify and address disparities across different populations, including economic, racial, and access challenges. He noted that specialty pharmacies must focus on breaking down barriers such as language differences and medication affordability to provide equitable care. Griffin also underlined that the approach should be flexible, allowing organizations to tailor their strategies to the specific needs of the populations they serve.

Pharmacy Times: Why is leadership support and meaningful data collection crucial for launching a successful health equity program in a specialty pharmacy setting?

Shawn Griffin, MD: Well, in any setting, leadership involvement is important because when you have initiatives that talk about improving quality, sometimes the frontline people sort of view it as the flavor of the week. If you don't have the leaders actually involved in supporting it, then they just think it'll go away and it's not something that's core to the organization. When we think about equity, we really are talking about quality. It's really about taking a look at all the populations that you serve and making sure that you're getting the outcomes that you want and everybody's getting a fair shake from your services.

Pharmacy Times: What are key considerations when developing a program plan to ensure equitable services and support for diverse patient populations in specialty pharmacy?

Griffin: One of the unique things about our program is our health equity program, which is for everything from little corner pharmacies all the way up to multistate organizations. It's not just limited to a certain size or a certain demographic. Generally, what we find is that organizations are looking at the data for the outcomes and the outreach that they have — things around access, things around economics, things around gender, racial differences, those sorts of things. We're not prescriptive as to what you need to be addressing, because we know that different organizations serve different populations. When I first started out, I was in rural areas, and we saw rural and urban disparities. Then I practiced in an urban environment, and we were seeing different ethnic differences. Then during COVID, you saw differences based upon racial outcomes and those things. What we say is that you need to be surveying your population and make sure that you're addressing the gaps that you find. We don't dictate what those gaps have to be or what the measures need to be.

Pharmacy Times: Based on your experience, what are some of the most impactful best practices for advancing health equity within specialty pharmacy services?

Griffin: Within specialty pharmacy services, there's sort of the baseline of language barriers. You want to make sure that whoever you're serving gets the information that they need in the language that they speak and that they have understanding, because understanding is really the base for any sort of treatment. Also, you need to look at economic disparities with some of the medications that are handled in specialty pharmacies. They're just so expensive that those are barriers to being able to purchase those medications. I mean, as a physician, the worst prescription in the world is one that a patient finds out how much it costs, and they never fill it. We really think that there needs to be a look at the economic challenges and making sure that you're addressing those things along with any access challenges. You want to make sure that someone who's in a wheelchair can get into your store. You want to make sure that somebody who has heart failure can maybe get up the steps to your location or those things or look about home delivery for those people who can't get out of their homes to really pick up their medicines. It's really about whatever the barriers are, making sure that you address those in a systematic manner.