Closing the gaps: How connected technology is reshaping specialty medication access
Health systems and specialty practices are under increasing pressure to accelerate patient access to therapies. Fragmented workflows, disconnected systems and administrative work continue to slow that process.
During a recent webinar hosted by Becker’s Healthcare and CoverMyMeds, leaders from CoverMyMeds and Ontada explored how integrated technology and AI-powered automation can streamline specialty medication access and improve outcomes for both patients and care teams.
Here are four key takeaways from the conversation.
1. Fragmentation is the core barrier
Both Miranda Delatore DNP, RN, NEA-BC, vice president of product at CoverMyMeds, and Molly Brady, RN, BSN, director of customer success at Ontada, identified fragmentation as the root cause of delays in specialty therapy starts. Care teams are navigating a patchwork of EHRs, payer portals, faxes, emails and spreadsheets to complete a single medication access workflow.
“None of these tools were really designed to work together,” Miranda said. “By default, clinicians have ended up acting as this integration layer and we all know that’s definitely not why they went to school.”
She noted that roughly 60% of clinicians still cite phone calls, emails and manual EHR data entry as among their most time-consuming daily tasks. These administrative delays often translate directly into clinical delays.
Molly echoed this from the oncology practice level, describing a recent clinic visit. “The care team was literally going to the order in the EHR, looking at the practice management system, into the payer portal just to complete the approval step tied to a single treatment plan.”
In oncology, where timing directly affects outcomes, those gaps have real consequences. “Delays in treatment create more stress for those patients, and they force clinics to adjust infusion schedules, chair time and staffing,” Molly said. “When those workflows aren’t connected, those delays are absolutely unavoidable.”
2. The cost of administrative work
The complexity behind a single therapy start spans benefits investigation, prior authorization and patient support enrollment. Each step often requires accessing multiple disconnected systems.
Inconsistent data formats, repeated information requests and manual re-entry create inefficiencies and increase the risk of error.
“Everyone is dependent on having the full story around the patient, and we’ve not enabled them in a way to have access to that consistently,” Miranda said.
The responsibility falls heavily on care teams working directly with patients facing serious diagnoses. “These are the people that are often face-to-face with a patient who’s carrying the weight of a really heavy diagnosis,” she said. “I believe that’s where health systems are really feeling this friction.”
Beyond the human impact, the inefficiency is costly. Health systems are allocating staff time to administrative tasks that pull them away from direct patient care, a dynamic many organizations are working to reverse.
3. Integration enables scalable improvement
CoverMyMeds is addressing fragmentation by bringing benefits investigation, prior authorization and patient support enrollment into a single connected experience embedded within the EHR.
“When an EHR can automatically surface the right information and pre-populate what’s needed, it dramatically reduces the amount of manual input that’s required,” Miranda said. “That alignment reduces the delays caused by missing or mismatched fields and leads to more complete submissions on the first try.”
She emphasized that the goal is to support existing clinical workflows rather than change them. By integrating tools directly into the EHR, care teams can stay focused on patients instead of navigating multiple systems.
4. AI and automation
Both speakers distinguished between automation and AI, noting that each plays a specific role in improving workflows. Automation addresses repetitive, structured tasks, while AI helps interpret unstructured clinical data and align it with payer requirements.
“Think about taking clinical notes or nuanced documentation and mapping that information to complex payer requirements,” Miranda said. “Those are areas where today clinicians spend a lot of time hunting and pecking in the chart.”
The platform’s design reflects a balance between efficiency and oversight: technology operates in the background while clinicians retain visibility and control over decisions.
For health system leaders, the starting point is clear. Organizations should assess current workflows, benchmark performance and identify gaps in interoperability across providers, pharmacies and payers.
“Understand the impact to patients first,” Mirand said. “Technology really connects and works in the background but ultimately the clinical teams always have the oversight to make the decision to move forward. The value is to reduce friction — but not to introduce uncertainty.”
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