ComputerTalk Publisher Bill Lockwood sits down with Patrick and Eric Davis to hear about the focus of Pontem Health Solutions, located in the Pittsburgh metro area, and their system Patient Health Flow (PHF). Patrick is director of operations and Eric is the finance director.
ComputerTalk: Let’s start with how you came up with the idea for Patient Health Flow.
Patrick Davis: We achieved our specialty accreditations in 2017 and began servicing disease states where the patients are traditionally underserved and marginalized. We began to recognize barriers that existed in care that could be overcome by free lines of communication through all involved in that patient’s health journey.
Eric Davis: We were utilizing multiple platforms and software suites to meet accreditation standards. We found that these fragmented solutions created additional barriers that hindered the end care of our patients. The development of Patient Health Flow was organic and specific to delivery of care to our patients.
CT: Now a little on your backgrounds.
Eric: Our father is a pharmacist whose passion is independent retail pharmacy. We grew up watching him build a successful independent pharmacy that focused on patient health and well-being first. We both took different career paths that ultimately led back to providing a high level of care at community pharmacies. We took his mindset on patient care and made it our underlying focus on all pharmacy operations.
CT: Give us the specifics on how Pontem Health Solutions and your product can benefit pharmacies.
Eric: Patient Health Flow allows the pharmacy to focus its efforts on what actually impacts the patient’s health outcomes, while exceeding industry standards. It breaks down communication barriers between all providers while eliminating duplicate care steps.
Patrick: Too many times independent pharmacies have gone above and beyond for patient needs but have not been able to quantify their efforts. Our software allows the pharmacy to prove payer value through data-driven metrics that are gathered and shared in real time. PHF is a platform that allows you to demonstrate and prove your efforts in providing patient care on multiple levels. This helps independent pharmacies gain access to closed and restricted networks.
CT: Tell us more about your vision on seamless patient care and how the use of data can break patient barriers.
Patrick: By providing immediate and transparent communication between all parties involved, we were able to utilize data in a way that broke down barriers that would normally hinder the patient’s experience and negatively impact outcomes. There are times when the physician, pharmacy, and payer all have different contact information for locally transient patients. This can create gaps and delays in patient care. The ultimate cost in this scenario is the loss of a positive therapy outcome. Patient Health Flow can connect all parties involved by sharing information and simplifying the patient experience. A care cycle should be seamless and continuous — it shouldn’t be steps with barriers.
We can also use data to proactively prevent breakdowns in care for certain scenarios. Recognizing what steps need to be taken with a patient to avoid therapy failure can allow for a customized care cycle that best fits individual needs. Every patient who walks through the doors of a pharmacy has a different story and different needs. PHF allows you to be attentive to those specific needs at the start of care, not reactionary to an issue that arises during therapy.
Eric: Data generated through patient care should not be viewed as a commodity. It should be used as a tool to drive positive outcomes in care and increase value to the payers. When we developed PHF we would often ask ourselves “How would we want our grandparents treated?”We used this as a measuring stick for what we wanted the software to achieve.
CT: Have you made any progress with your product’s integration in pharmacy systems?
Patrick: Yes. We have full read/write integration with multiple dispensing systems. This allows for the data grab to occur in-house at the server level rather than using switch-level data.
CT: Is there anything else you would like to add?
Eric: Patient Health Flow continues to evolve as a tool that includes AI [artificial intelligence]-driven audit protection and support; 340B third-party administrator functionality, where we can complete the necessary reporting for covered entities as well as perform audits for claim accuracy; and direct patient communication. Care should be impactful, but accessible and easy for the patient. It all comes back to what our father taught us — the patient comes first. CT