BOSTON, MA — A new partnership between Boston-based Clearway Health, a company partnering with hospitals and health systems to build and strengthen specialty pharmacy programs and Baptist Health, a full-spectrum health system with nine acute care hospitals headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, was formalized to improve access to payor networks. Entryway into payor networks will aim to improve availability of prescription medications at more affordable prices.

Baptist Health opened a new centralized pharmacy for its healthcare system in June. The partnership with Clearway Health will break down barriers to allow the entire health system, which has 11 existing retail pharmacies across the system, as well as the new central fill pharmacy to unlock opportunities often inaccessible to local or regional hospitals, including access to medications with payor lockouts.

The improved pathway to these medications at more affordable prices will help to reduce care fragmentation by allowing the clinical team to manage the care of more of their patients across the continuum, including their medications and supplies. The health system's improved financial margin will help provide additional and much needed healthcare services to patients and the local community.

"Baptist Health is transforming specialty pharmacy services --not only for our health system, but for hospitals across the country in setting a new industry standard," said Nilesh Desai, MBA, BS, RPh, CPPS, chief pharmacy officer at Baptist Health. "Having an expert partner like Clearway Health to navigate challenging payor networks is a tremendous advantage for our program's growth. In just one year, this work will generate nearly $100M in incremental revenue that will allow Baptist Health to continue to provide essential healthcare services for the communities it serves."

To help hospitals and health systems gain access to life-saving medications for their patients and keep patient care integrated, optimizing relationships with payors is crucial to the success of a specialty pharmacy program and helps to lower costs for all parties involved including the patients, health system and payors.

"Clearway Health supports health systems at every point of their pharmacy and specialty pharmacy journey," said Allison Arant, senior vice president, client development and marketing, Clearway Health. "We're honored to serve as Baptist Health's partner as they launch the fast-tracked expansion of their program. In the first 30 days of our partnership, we unlocked access to the first payor and look forward to continued growth and success together."