The CDC reported in 2025 that more than 76% of U.S. adults have one or more chronic conditions. With therapies advancing in their capabilities and complexity, specialty patient care is at an inflection point. Patients now move through a long series of referrals, benefit checks, authorizations, consultations, and refills that can include ten or more distinct touchpoints and handoffs from the time of initial diagnosis.
Managing these patients across disparate systems and settings increases the risk of delays, gaps in care, and administrative overload. The pressure is on health systems to coordinate care across multiple touchpoints, accelerate time to therapy, and improve outcomes, all while administrative burden grows, and resources stay stretched.
The financial stakes reflect that pressure. With specialty therapies now accounting for more than half (52%) of net prescription drug spend and many individual drugs costing tens of thousands of dollars per patient each year, every delay, denial, or gap in therapy carries outsized clinical and financial consequences for health systems. Patients expect reliable access. Providers demand efficiency. Both depend on one connected system built to deliver measurable outcomes across the entire journey, rather than a stack of disconnected point solutions. The health systems that get specialty care right will have a measurable edge in outcomes, efficiency, and patient experience.
This article explores the value of a unified platform that enables clinical teams and technology to operate as one connected system across the full patient journey. It highlights how Shields Health Solutions helps health systems address fragmented workflows and vendor complexity with a single, integrated model that was designed to improve efficiency, accelerate care, and enhance the patient experience.
Shields Delivers Connected Performance Across the Health System Specialty Continuum
At Shields Health Solutions, we believe that specialty care should be built on a human-centric approach. For more than a decade, our care model has paired dedicated clinical teams with integrated tools, data, and workflows to support more coordinated care across therapy access, patient experience, operational rigor, and program expansion.
More recently, we’ve expanded that model with AI and informed automation embedded directly into everyday specialty care workflows. By tightening the connection between our clinical teams and technology, clinicians spend more time with patients and less on paperwork. From automating administrative workflows to streamlining patient communications and 340B program management, our technology solutions connect every part of the care journey in one integrated system, empowering our clinical teams to deliver greater efficiency. By bringing together clinical expertise, technology, and network-wide intelligence, we help health systems move from insight to action, optimize performance, and support sustainable growth, while maintaining the human touch that drives better patient and provider experiences. We call this connected performance.
Related Read: Benchmarking the Future: Industry-Leading Specialty Outcomes
Shields’ Four Solutions Driving Connected Performance
Shields’ care model supports the full specialty patient journey through one integrated approach. By connecting therapy access, patient engagement, operational rigor, and program expansion, health systems can manage and strengthen their specialty pharmacy program as one connected system. Shields’ continued investments in key technologies drives better experiences and outcomes for our patients.
Expand Therapy Access
Shields’ model is designed to help eligible patients start and stay on the specialty therapies they need. Therapy access focuses on the two barriers that keep patients from therapy: payer lockouts and drug access. Shields clears complex payer rules and limited distribution of drug (LDD) networks, so health systems unlock coverage faster and reach more eligible patients, accelerated by cutting edge technologies. Real-time eligibility verification confirms coverage at the point of prescription, a drug access database checks LDD availability, and automated benefits investigation surfaces prior authorization and step-therapy requirements before they cause delays.
Optimize Patient Experience
Specialty patients need continuous, coordinated support across the entire treatment journey. Shields’ integrated technology platform works alongside clinicians as one system combining clinical, operational and technical expertise, creating more capacity for interventions, adherence support, and care coordination. Through AI-enabled workflow automation, powered by Foundation Health, and connected care tools, Shields helps connect every step of the specialty medication journey, creating a more seamless patient experience while improving coordination, adherence, and clinical outcomes. The platform keeps prescribers, nurses, and other specialists informed and aligned on treatment plans, so the full care team stays in the loop, while Patient Liaisons and pharmacists deliver the human follow-up that keeps patients on therapy.
Deliver Operational Rigor
Operational and financial performance are essential to a sustainable specialty pharmacy program. Shields automates routine work, including claims processing, denial management, and performance benchmarking, helping health systems operate more efficiently and capture greater value from existing resources. This operational support also extends to the complexities of 340B program management.
Shields’ 340B IQ™ brings connected performance to 340B, automating eligibility screening, compliance monitoring, and IRA drug-pricing support while providing greater visibility into savings opportunities and compliance risk.
Drive Program Expansion
A specialty pharmacy program earns its place in the system when it grows. Shields helps health systems grow specialty volume, extend services into new sites of care, and demonstrate the program’s value to the organization. RxTriage®, which builds a comprehensive and unified intake workflow, while optimizing site of care for the patient and health system This allows health systems to better improve patient and provider experience through coordinated specialty care across every benefit channel and site of care.
Across our model, technology is woven into the capability it serves, automating the routine, surfacing what needs a human, and leaving the clinical judgment to Shields’ pharmacists and specialists. The result is one end-to-end specialty pharmacy workflow ecosystem where the tools and humans work together as a single, connected system.
3 Ways Shields’ Specialty Operating Platform is Transforming Specialty Care
With a single partner accountable for outcomes, health systems gain a more connected, scalable approach than disconnected point solutions can provide. Shields is transforming specialty pharmacy in three distinct ways:
1. Integrates best-in-class AI and automation
Specialty pharmacy is a highly connected discipline. Patients move across providers and care settings, making every handoff an opportunity for something to fall through. Any technology solution that operates in isolation has limited visibility into the broader care journey.
An AI model is only as effective as the data and workflows it draws from. When AI is embedded within an integrated infrastructure, it can use connected data and clinical workflows to surface insights and guide decisions that a standalone solution simply cannot replicate.
Shields integrates AI and informed automation to help health system partners drive measurable improvements, including:
Significant reductions in manual work for PA
Faster time to therapy
Better approval rates
Reduced administrative burden across teams.
Prior authorization, for example, is historically one of the most time-consuming and fragmented processes in healthcare. In one AMA survey, 94% of providers reported delays in necessary care because of PA processes. Shields’ PA automation, powered by our partnership with Foundation Health, helps streamline this process from eligibility and benefits checks through submission and monitoring, all within multi-step order transmission (MSOT) and existing workflows. Embedding AI into this connected environment reduces delays from manual handoffs, lowers the risk of error, and keeps the process moving more consistently and efficiently.
Related Read: Artificial Intelligence in Specialty Pharmacy: Innovation That Empowers, Not Replaces
2. Scales without sacrificing the human touch
Automation and human-centered care work together. Survey data shows that 81% of specialty pharmacy and infusion teams still use the phone as a primary method to support and engage patients. AI creates space for that human connection by handling the routine administrative work that pulls care teams away from patients, freeing them to focus on follow-ups, questions, and the kind of personalized support that defines specialty care.
Patient engagement remains central to our model. Dedicated Patient Liaisons build meaningful relationships through personalized outreach and ongoing support, ensuring patients feel guided and connected throughout their care journey. Behind the scenes, Shields' centralized operations teams reduce administrative burden through automated refill reminders, streamlined workflows, and other asynchronous touchpoints, allowing uniquely qualified pharmacists to focus on personalized interventions that help patients stay on therapy and achieve better outcomes.
Across all of these workflows, automation prepares and streamlines the work. Final decisions, outreach, and clinical actions are reviewed or completed by real people to maintain accuracy, safety, and trust.
3. Helps pharmacists practice at the top of their license
Every administrative task is time not spent with a patient. Shields helps health systems remove friction from the care journey by connecting workflows, technology, and clinical teams, empowering pharmacists to focus on delivering personalized support, improving access to therapy, and enhancing outcomes.
Shields’ pharmacy operating platform gives pharmacists, and care teams the capacity to focus on higher-value activities, including:
Clinical interventions
Patient education and adherence support
Care coordination across providers
Proactive identification of potential issues.
When pharmacists practice at the top of their license, the whole health system feels it: patients get more proactive, personalized care; providers gain a stronger clinical partner; and the program improves both operational performance and outcomes.
Related Read: The Hidden Value of Integrated Specialty Pharmacy
Improve Your Operations and Patient Journey through Connected Performance
The future of specialty care depends on the connection between systems, teams, and most importantly, patients. New technology makes that connection possible, but only when implementation is thoughtful, and integration is end-to-end.
Shields brings together AI-driven insights, and a deeply human approach to care into one integrated model. For health systems, the differentiator is how well that technology keeps patients, providers, and care teams connected and supported at every step.