In support of the Philippine government’s initiatives to promote universal healthcare, Docquity, Southeast Asia’s largest trusted community of healthcare professionals, is innovating and digitizing Patient Affordability Programs (PAP) in the country to empower doctors to ensure better treatment outcomes for patients with cancer, especially those in need of financial assistance. Docquity PAP provides doctors with trusted teleconsultation facilities that improve overall patient management and follow-up care, enrolls patients seamlessly to wider pharmacy networks for access to affordable medication regardless of their location, and helps partner pharmaceutical companies digitize and streamline operations securely.
Since it was piloted last year, Docquity PAP has enabled more than 350 doctors from 150 hospitals to support over 1,000 patients with cancer to get needed medicines at affordable rates. The program has delivered more than US$ 1M in total savings for patients.
“This is one of those meaningful win-win programs, in line with our vision to connect doctors to build healthier lives around the world at scale. The Docquity PAP pilot program has proven to be a tremendous use case for the Philippines and, potentially, other countries and more therapeutic areas,” Amit Vithal, Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer at Docquity, said.
“The goals were multifold – to make it easier for doctors to care for their patients, to help patients overcome high costs in medication and treatment, as well as accessibility issues in rural areas, and to bring down operational costs and enable our partners to scale their impact. Our single digital platform and technology is now part of that reimagined journey, and the impact we have seen on patients’ lives have been so tangible.”
Helping doctors become more efficient and effective
Docquity PAP enables doctors to teleconsult with patients through Docquity Clinic, a secure cloud-based end-to-end patient management platform accessible from any device with an internet connection, nominate and enroll patients who need financial assistance, issue e-prescriptions, and follow up on treatment progress. A dedicated Docquity Care team provides hand-in-glove services to all the participants involved in the process, from onboarding to prescription and continued patient adherence. In compliance with industry regulations, Docquity ensures that each interaction with the patient is documented and monitored, and follows partner requirements for adverse event reporting.
Improving access to more affordable medicines
Current paper-based PAPs limit patient enrollments to one pharmacy network to get prescriptions at discounted rates. Patients who need access to other pharmacy networks need to cross-enroll. Docquity PAP provides flexibility and scalability to expand pharmacy networks, enabling patients to access multiple branches depending on their location and access medicines from departments with available inventory.
Docquity addresses overall affordability, offering a platform for teleconsultations, making the logistics of getting medication more accessible, and providing additional support for patients. It engages patients through SMS, calls, emails, and chatbots to ensure they continue their therapy. Patients of physicians who are not yet part of Docquity’s program can ask their doctor to register to have access to these benefits.
Securing and streamlining patient affordability programs
Docquity PAP helps partner pharmaceutical companies streamline operations to reduce costs, process records and requirements more efficiently and accurately, improve insights-gathering, and strengthen verification procedures with multiple checks and one-time password (OTP) validations. It ensures a secure system and reduces possibilities of error and fraud resulting from entirely paper-based processes, dependence on a single store in complete control of the program execution, lack of data capture in the number of drugs prescribed and dispensed, and under-reporting of adverse events.
Building on this success, Docquity is engaging in further conversations with more pharmaceutical companies to digitize PAPs and cover more therapeutic areas, onboard more doctors, and make the program available to more Filipinos all over the country.
