In specialty pharmacy, timing isn’t just important. It’s everything. When patients face serious diagnoses like cancer, multiple sclerosis, or an autoimmune disease, each day of treatment delay can compromise outcomes and trust.

While affordability is one piece of a broader access challenge, it’s a visible barrier that significantly impacts speed. Cost-related delays are often silent dealbreakers, determining whether patients start and stay on therapy, and whether referring providers continue sending patients your way.

And yet, despite growing awareness of this issue, the journey from prescription to dispense often lags. This is rarely the result of a single problem. Instead, it’s the accumulation of many small frictions: paperwork, missing signatures, opaque benefits processes, and manual financial assistance workflows.

Pharmacies that prioritize faster access as key to superior patient care—and implement smart systems to support it—are no longer just meeting expectations. They’re gaining a competitive edge in a market where efficiency, outcomes, and patient experiences are mission critical.

Why Speed Impacts Patient Care–and Pharmacy Performance 

Specialty medications are among the most complex prescriptions to process. In many cases, starting therapy requires:

  • Prior authorization
  • Insurance verification
  • Patient consent
  • Coordination with affordability programs
  • Communication with referring providers

Delays in any of these steps can slow the entire process, increasing the likelihood of prescription abandonment, therapy non-initiation, or loss of the patient to another pharmacy.

In fact, a 2022 study published in the Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy cited long turnaround times as a major barrier to timely specialty medication access and a key contributor to non-initiation.

In this context, speed is no longer just a workflow metric. It’s a strategic differentiator that affects clinical outcomes, patient loyalty, provider referrals, and financial performance.

What Speed Looks Like in the Real World

Speed in specialty pharmacy isn’t just theoretical. It can be a decisive factor in moments of urgency. One financial navigator described helping a patient who needed an infusion the next day. Normally, the enrollment process for assistance programs would have taken a week.

But in this case, the patient was enrolled and approved for support within 12 hours.

The reason? The pharmacy had access to technology that enabled real-time program enrollment, signature capture, and auto-populated forms. Without this, the patient likely would have missed a critical treatment window.

These moments aren’t rare. They’re happening every day—and pharmacies that are prepared to act quickly can make all the difference.

Common Bottlenecks Slowing Down Access

When it comes to financial assistance, many pharmacies still face the same recurring hurdles:

  • Lack of visibility into patient eligibility for available support programs
  • Manual paperwork for enrolling patients in copay or foundation assistance
  • Fax-based or portal-based forms that exist outside of pharmacy systems
  • Delays in capturing required signatures, especially when patients aren’t physically present

All of these issues add friction to the process—and in a time-sensitive environment, that friction translates into lost patients, missed revenue, and strained provider relationships.

Strategies for Accelerating Enrollment and Time to Fill

The good news: Pharmacies that adopt a few core strategies can reduce cost-related delays and improve performance across the board.

✅ Prioritize Real-Time Visibility

Pharmacies should be able to proactively flag patients eligible for assistance, even before affordability becomes a barrier. Integrating real-time eligibility checks into the intake process is essential.

✅ Embed Assistance into Workflow

Support programs—whether manufacturer copay, PAP, or foundation grants—should be directly accessible within a single platform. Staff shouldn’t need to toggle between systems or rely on memory.

✅ Automate Enrollment Tasks

Auto-populating financial assistance applications with existing data can eliminate duplication, reduce human error, and cut down approval time.

✅ Enable Instant Signature Capture

Digital tools for capturing signatures—especially on mobile—can help complete enrollments in hours instead of days.

✅ Track Program Impact

Pharmacies should set meaningful KPIs, such as faster time to fill and enrollment. Tracking these metrics empowers leadership to determine which strategies are increasing efficiency and access–and where gaps remain.

The Broader Benefits of Moving Faster

When pharmacies shorten the time from receipt to dispense, they don’t just help patients. They:

  • Increase first-fill capture
  • Improve adherence and refill rates
  • Reduce order cancellations due to cost
  • Build provider trust and loyalty
  • Boost operational efficiency and reduce staff burnout
  • Lower abandonment and increase revenue

In other words, faster access isn’t just good clinical practice. It’s good business.

Where to Start

If your pharmacy isn’t moving as quickly as it should, now is the time to take a hard look at what’s slowing you down. Consider:

  • Are patients abandoning therapy—or choosing other pharmacies—due to cost-related delays?
  • Where are the biggest delays occurring?
  • How much staff time is spent navigating assistance programs?

Answering these questions can help you map out process improvements, technology investments, or partnership opportunities to close the gap.

How Technology Can Help

At TailorMed, we help specialty pharmacies reduce delays by embedding affordability solutions directly into pharmacy workflows. Our platform includes:

  • Real-time alerts for foundation fund openings and status changes
  • Express Enroll: for direct enrollment into manufacturer assistance programs
  • SmartSign: for quick digital signature capture
  • Auto Form Fill: for pre-filled applications that save time and reduce friction

By leveraging technology, two large speciality pharmacies achieved:

  • 35% ↓ in time to fill
  • 60% ↓ in staff time spent on enrollment
  • 89% ↓ in order cancellations due to cost

 

If you’re looking to improve speed, simplify staff workflows, and boost outcomes for your patients and your pharmacy, we’d love to talk.

Contact our team to learn more.