Digital Pharmacy Cuts Activation Time 40% with Dedicated Operations

The Client

Our client is a prominent pharmaceutical platform that transforms prescription access for over 6 million patients around the globe. With a 95% dispense rate, the platform delivers integrated medication access solutions for patients, pharmaceutical brands, and prescribers, helping people get the therapy they need much faster.

The Helpware Environment

We embarked on this project in 2021, providing the client with benefits activation services (English and multilingual), Digi+Hub platform support, as well as real-time analytics and operational intelligence. The engagement is supported by 203 FTEs across the U.S., Puerto Rico, and Guatemala.

The Challenge: When Platform Growth Outpaces Operational Capacity

Despite being a leader in digital pharmacy innovation, our client faced several operational issues that slowed the platform’s growth. Therapy initiation depends on fast, accurate, and well-coordinated workflows—and when operations fall behind, patient outcomes suffer and financial impact ensues.

• Therapy start delays. Verifying benefits, confirming eligibility, and activating therapy created bottlenecks for our client. At the time, the platform relied on manual handoffs, which led to slower therapy starts and higher risk of patients abandoning care.
• Patient abandonment risk. Missing intake information, long wait times, and insufficient follow-up led many patients to dropping pharmacy care. Every abandoned case had a negative impact on both patient outcomes and revenue.
• Multilingual & geographic scale. The client aimed to support patients in multiple languages and comply with state-specific regulations. While doing so, they wanted to maintain the same high level of quality and decrease compliance risks.
• Analytics & visibility gaps. As demand for real-time insights grew, the client struggled with inconsistent reporting and limited visibility into workflows. As a result, they had a hard time spotting emerging risks and allocating resources properly.

To overcome these challenges, the client set out to build an operational infrastructure that could keep up with the platform’s growth while maintaining precision, ensuring compliance, and delivering a smooth patient experience. That’s when Helpware’s expertise came into play.

The Solution: Purpose-Built Pharmacy Access Operations

Our team built a tailored operating model designed with the Digi+Hub platform’s core values in mind: starting therapy quickly, reducing friction in access workflows, and keeping patients engaged throughout. We helped the client boost performance through the following integrated capabilities:

• Digi+Hub operating pod structure. Our support agents coordinated intake, routed tasks, and proactively followed up with patients.We designed clear processes that covered both common issues and edge cases, helping the teams deliver consistent CX even when the number of requests surged.
• Multilingual coverage. We expanded language support to remove barriers in the medication access journey. With approved scripts and decision guides, we ensured consistent quality and compliance across all languages and regulatory environments.
• Benefits activation acceleration playbooks. We created clear playbooks that guided teams through benefits verification and activation based on payer type and access scenario. Proactive checklists cut down back-and-forth and helped patients get activated faster.
• Real-time analytics. A dedicated analytics team provided daily reporting, tracked exceptions, and monitored trends (delays, abandonment risk, and buildup, etc.). Through custom dashboards we gave leaders near real-time visibility into issues so they could act quickly.
• Quality & governance at scale. We built a quality framework that focused on real access outcomes—not just individual interactions. Regular performance reviews helped identify root causes, resolve escalations, and continuously improve workflows.

The Results

Our work delivered tangible improvements across access, operations, and patient experience.

Access & Operational Acceleration

• 25–40% faster benefits activation workflows
• 30–45% less rework due to more complete intake and better task routing
• 15–25% productivity improvement in per-FTE throughput across critical queues

Patient Journey Improvements

• 10–18% improvement in first-contact resolution for benefits and access inquiries
• 20–35% fewer follow-up interactions thanks to clearer next-step guidance and proactive communication
• Significant reduction in patient drop-off through improved intake processes and proactive follow-through protocols

Control & Operational Visibility

• Daily near-real-time dashboards replacing weekly reporting lag
• Proactive identification of queue spikes, abandonment indicators, and payer-specific friction themes
• Comprehensive visibility enabling data-driven resource allocation and proactive bottleneck resolution