Why Your Current Tracking Systems Hide The Bottlenecks Impacting Patient Outcomes

Frontier-IQ
May 16
4 min read

Most life sciences companies can't see the patient journey roadblocks their own systems create.

Your tracking systems weren't built to identify bottlenecks—they were designed to check compliance boxes, “move patients along” to the next step, and generate activity reports. This blind spot isn't just frustrating—it's destroying patient outcomes while your dashboards show everything's fine.

Your tracking systems weren't built to identify bottlenecks—they were designed to check compliance boxes, “move patients along” to the next step, and generate activity reports.

YOUR TRACKING SYSTEMS CONCEAL 3 CRITICAL BOTTLENECKS

1. Disconnected Systems Create Data Black Holes

Every disconnection point in your patient journey is a potential treatment delay. The average life sciences company uses 7-9 disconnected systems to track patient journeys. When a specialty pharmacy reports a prior authorization issue in System A, but your hub services team manages interventions in System B, that critical information sits trapped in digital limbo.

REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE

An oncology brand discovered that its average time to therapy was 21 days longer than reported because prior authorization status updates in its specialty pharmacy system never triggered alerts in its hub system.

2. Dashboards That Track Activities, Not Outcomes

Your tracking systems count actions taken, not problems solved. They proudly display important call volumes and enrollment numbers—but do they show which patients are actually receiving medication?

Your tracking systems count actions taken, not problems solved.

According to Axtria's 2024 report, "The most important application of specialty pharmacy data is to triangulate patients in the fulfillment journey for identifying significant bottlenecks." Yet most companies can't meaningfully connect enrollment data to fulfillment data.

REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE

A multiple sclerosis therapy program reported 94% "successful patient support" based on completed welcome calls. When prescription data was finally integrated, they discovered that 38% of those "successfully supported" patients never received a single dose.

3. Rigid Patient Pathways Create False Success Metrics

Real patients don't follow neat, linear process flowcharts. And most tracking systems force patients into predetermined paths instead of adapting to their actual needs.

Real patients don't follow a neat, linear process flowcharts.

Press Ganey's analysis of 6.5 million patient encounters shows that what patients experience differs significantly from what healthcare systems think they deliver. Yet your tracking systems continue to measure success based on predetermined journeys.

REAL-WORLD EXAMPLE

A diabetes care team celebrated 80% "journey completion" rates while actual medication adherence plummeted. Their tracking system counted patients as "complete" once benefit verification was finished—regardless of whether patients received medication.

THE BUSINESS CONSEQUENCES OF HIDDEN BOTTLENECKS

These tracking blind spots create very real business problems:

Wasted support team resources: Your teams build elaborate spreadsheet workarounds, wasting up to 40% of their time manually stitching together data from multiple systems.
Delayed therapy initiation: For every day patients wait beyond the first week, abandonment rates increase by 3%.
Misallocated program investments: You're making optimization decisions based on incomplete visibility into the actual patient experience.

HOW PATIENT-FOCUS™ REVEALS WHAT OTHER SYSTEMS HIDE

While other systems mask bottlenecks, Patient-Focus™ exposes and eliminates them through:

1. Unified Patient Journey Visibility

Patient-Focus™ connects all data sources across hub services, specialty pharmacies, payer interactions, and patient outreach to create a single source of truth. This unified view reveals bottlenecks before they impact patients.

2. Real-Time Bottleneck Alerts

Stop discovering problems weeks after patients abandon therapy. Patient-Focus™ automatically alerts the right team member with specific action steps when a prior authorization stalls or a benefit verification is delayed.

3. Adaptive Intelligence

Patient-Focus™ adapts to actual patient behavior rather than forcing compliance with predetermined journeys. Our system identifies deviation patterns and creates intervention opportunities before patients fall through the cracks.

REAL RESULTS FROM ELIMINATING TRACKING BLIND SPOTS

A mid-sized biotech implemented Patient-Focus™ and discovered a 16-day approval bottleneck between hub and specialty pharmacy that was invisible in their previous tracking system.

Results: 43% improvement in first-fill rates and a 9-day reduction in time-to-therapy.

A rare disease therapy team thought their time to therapy was "industry-leading" based on their tracking data. Patient-Focus™ revealed that patients waited nearly twice as long because insurance verification delays weren't captured.

Results: Therapy initiation time was reduced by 58% in three months.

FROM BLIND TRACKING TO BOTTLENECK ELIMINATION

The difference between companies struggling with patient support and those transforming it isn't resources—it's visibility. You can't fix bottlenecks you can't see.

Ask yourself these questions about your current tracking system: