January 7, 2020 Shields Health Solutions

Excelera Expands Solutions for Members, Manufacturers and Payers, Improving Complex Patient Care in 2019

New specialty pharmacy services and products, health system members and top executive hires highlight 2019 accomplishments

MINNEAPOLISJanuary 7, 2020 — Excelera®, the company responsible for building the Excelera Network, a nationwide network of leading health systems and academic medical centers with specialty pharmacies, added new services, executive hires and leading health system members in 2019, further establishing the company and network as the premier community for improving complex pharmacy patient care in the U.S. Owned and operated by its health system members, the Excelera Network’s mission is focused on improving access to limited distribution drugs (LDDs), capturing insights to improve patient experience and outcomes, and optimizing performance for manufacturers, members and payers through data driven-driven programs and guidance.

Complex patients – those with multiple chronic conditions or rare, hard to treat diseases – are on the rise in the U.S. and are among the most prevalent and costly to treat, which is putting increased demand and pressure on health systems. With continued market consolidation, rising pharmaceutical prices and legal and regulatory uncertainty, providing streamlined care for these patients requires a holistic, coordinated ecosystem where pharmacists, specialists and primary care providers (PCPs) collaborate effectively to provide exceptional care. Excelera has expanded its innovative programs and solutions that encourage value-based care models and enable best practice sharing among some of the most qualified specialty pharmacists in the industry, to improve patient experience and outcomes. The Excelera data platform serves as the foundation of these programs and solutions, capturing a wider range of longitudinal medical, pharmacy and cost-of-care data for complex pharmacy patients.

“At Excelera, we are passionate about transforming the way complex pharmacy patient care is delivered within the health system,” said Don Amorosi, Chief Operating Officer at Excelera. “Excelera’s initiatives are grounded in the understanding that improving outcomes for complex pharmacy patients is necessary and possible with the engagement of all stakeholders.”

In 2019, Excelera built on its already robust product and service offering to provide additional solutions that help health systems to effectively optimize the cost and operation of in-house specialty pharmacies:

New products and services

  • This year, Excelera launched the industry’s only health-system centric Pharmacy Benefit Management (PBM) Solution, which is a flexible, transparent option that enables health systems to control utilization management, formulary, clinical protocols, and pharmacy network selection.
  • The company also announced a systematic process for measuring patient medication adherence and the ability to benchmark against health systems in the Excelera Network. Using Excelera’s data platform, member health networks can systematically measure and report on proportion of days covered (PDC), allowing specialty pharmacists to regularly measure adherence and make appropriate patient outreach and/or therapy management decisions.

Member health systems join Excelera Network
The addition of two health systems increased Excelera’s combined network specialty pharmacy revenue to over $2.3B with access to over 500 hospitals and more than 100K physicians.

  • The Excelera Network added HonorHealth as a member in August. HonorHealth is a non-profit, local community healthcare system serving an area of 1.6 million people in the greater Phoenix area.
  • St. Luke’s Health System became the first member in the state of Idaho when it joined the Excelera Network in February. St. Luke’s is Idaho’s only Idaho-based, not-for-profit health system and is nationally recognized for excellence in patient care.

Limited distribution drugs (LDDs) available to members

  • The Excelera Network was selected by Karyopharm Therapeutics, Inc. to be in the limited drug distribution network for XPOVIO™ (selinexor), which was approved as a treatment for patients with multiple myeloma by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
  • Members of the Excelera Network were granted access to VYNDAQEL® (tafamidis meglumine) and VYNDAMAX™ (tafamidis) through a new partnership with Pfizer, the first and only oral medications approved by the FDA for the treatment of the cardiomyopathy of wild-type or hereditary transthyretin-mediated amyloidosis (ATTR-CM) in adults. The two oral medications are used in adults to reduce cardiovascular mortality and cardiovascular-related hospitalization due to ATTR-CM.

Key Executives welcomed
In 2019, the addition and promotion of key executives with a wide range of experience in various healthcare sectors brought a diversified and valuable leadership perspective to operations and technology as well as manufacturer relations were

  • Rebecca Rand was hired as the Vice President of Manufacturer Relations to work with manufacturers to identify pipeline launch strategies and commercialized product insights and analytics.
  • Don Amorosi, Chief Operating Officer, was hired to lead all company operations for Excelera’s growing nationwide network of health systems who are leveraging their pharmacy capabilities to provide high quality, integrated care for complex patient populations.
  • Troy Polan, previously Vice President Information Technology, was promoted to Chief Technology Officer to continue to set the strategy and direction for Excelera’s proprietary technology platform and solutions.