Reducing the burden across the patient journey
At Annexus Health we are solving for an often manual, fragmented, disconnected process that exists for the management of patient financial assistance at the provider level that typically results in treatment delays and adherence issues. Often times, financial counselors use antiquated tools such as sticky notes, paper and spreadsheets to try to keep track of assistance options available, enrollments, award utilization and payments. The result is an increase in Financial Toxicity for both patients and caregivers as assistance options are not able to be quickly identified as financial counselors have to spend hours searching for what is available. To compound the issue even further, once assistance options are identified, financial counselors have to re-type patient demographic information that already exists in the practice management system to complete application and enrollment forms which is time consuming and ripe for error. Our software platform, AssistPoint, is interfaced directly with the provider organization's practice management system and/or EHR, so that patient demographic information that already exists within the practice is seamlessly auto-populated onto integrated Life Science enrollment forms. This eliminates duplicate data entry, missing fields and enables the patient to get more of an immediate award response so that they can go on treatment faster with less financial toxicity.
AssistPoint is a fully connected cloud-based, workflow platform used by Oncology providers to manage the patient Financial Assistance Cycle Management (FACM) process. Within AssistPoint, Financial Counselors have the ability to Search, Enroll, Track, Analyze financial assistance options for their patients. Over 1900 assistance options are included in our comprehensive library for over 500 therapies (changes daily). Through an HL7/ADT interface, AssistPoint is able to be connected to the Oncology Practice practice management system as well as the EHR. This allows a data feed of patient demographic information directly into AssistPoint for overall patient management and to pre-populate application and enrollment forms. In addition, AssistPoint can also be connected via bi-directional API with Life Science Patient Support Programs as well as Charitable Foundations, to allow for a secure bi-directional data exchange, which results in tremendous time savings. A standard 9 tab enrollment form has been developed within AssistPoint that is customizable to each Life Science/Foundation support program depending on content required. The majority of the fields within the enrollment form can be pre-populated with data that already exists within the connected system. In addition, a financial counselor is able to make a call via API to obtain spend down and assistance funds remaining to stay on top of the award for the patient. To stay on top of activities related to FACM, a suite of robust analytic reports are also provided which is especially important for the C-suite and revenue identification and management.
From a competitive standpoint, our main competition is a manual behavior inertia by practices. Financial counselors are used to utilizing manual tools to manage financial assistance and they are typically hesitant to change. However, once they realize that patients may be slipping through the cracks and are not going on the prescribed therapy due to cost, they are open to learning how our platform can make their lives easier and most importantly help to improve patient outcomes by reducing financial toxicity. What makes Annexus Health and AssistPoint different is the fact that AP is the only platform that is truly connected end-to-end. In addition, we are currently partnered with over 50 of the top Oncology Provider groups in the United States as well as 7 of the top Oncology Life Science companies (and rapidly growing). Almost as important is the relationships that the team at Annexus Health brings to the table. Over the past 12 months we have announced strategic collaborations with Amerisource Bergen and OneOncology. In addition, we closed a $10 million series A funding round which has enabled us to rapidly grow from a 15 person company to now over 60 in less than 10 months. We also recently announced our expansion into Retina and we are already signing up Retina practices and are in active discussions with Life Science companies in this space.
AssistPoint is indeed delivering on our mission to reduce the administrative burden across the patient journey. One of our top provider customers, New York Cancer and Blood Specialists, was featured in an OBR article that was published in September 2019 (see attached). In the article, Michael Mitrani from NYCBS discusses the impact AssistPoint has had on their provider group. In addition, Annexus Health and AssistPoint has been recognized by Eyeforpharma, a major Life Science Industry Association, as the Health Start up of the Year and the Most Valuable Product/Digital Therapy. Here is a link to an interview that was conducted following the start up the year win: https://social.eyeforpharma.com/access-and-evidence/burning-desire-make-difference-patients. In addition, as previously mentioned, since we launched in 2018, through our platform, over $1billion in award assistance and over 80,000 applications have been managed within the platform. More examples of achievements can be found on our updates page: https://www.annexushealth.com/news/. From Dr. Vacirca at NYCBS: “We have long-awaited the arrival of a software system that will directly pull information from our practice management system and individualize patient assistance, program-by-program, while accessing the difficult-to-work-with disease funds,” said Jeff Vacirca, MD, FACP, Chief Executive Officer of NYCBS From a data science perspective, we have seen the following impact within our network: Of those patients that are assessed within AssistPoint vs not (within our network)-- we have seen a 22% increase in speed to treatment and 15% increase in # of treatments.
Through our fully connected platform, AssistPoint, we are removing the administrative burdens across the patient journey so that patients receive the right treatment at the right time with less financial toxicity. Patients are going on therapy quicker, staying on therapy longer, and not having to go bankrupt.
