Care Model
Specialty therapies have transformed treatment, but growing complexity has created new barriers for health systems, providers, and patients at nearly every step of the care journey.
Shields Care Model
The Shields Care Model connects the people, processes, and technology that solve a health system’s biggest challenges. Every element works together. None operate in isolation.
Board-certified medication experts integrated directly into the care team, with full EHR access and the clinical experience to manage complex specialty therapies and optimize treatment.
The bridge between the patient, clinic, and pharmacy, coordinating refills, navigating insurance and copay challenges, monitoring adherence, and resolving barriers to therapy.
A centralized hub of dedicated specialists who handle prior authorizations, benefits investigations, financial assistance, and outreach to keep treatment moving forward.
13%
Reduction in Total Cost of Care
93%
Proportion of Days Covered (PDC)/Adherence rate
35%
Decrease in Physician/ED Visits
<2
Days Average Time to Therapy (PA TAT)
Shields Care Model
Traditional specialty pharmacy services focus on medication access, fulfillment, adherence, and refill support. This model goes further by combining pharmacy expertise with proactive clinical monitoring, patient-reported outcomes, and data-driven insights. The goal is not to help patients stay on therapy, but to help ensure the therapy is working, well-tolerated, and aligned with better outcomes.
The journey begins with referral intake, benefit and access support, and clinical onboarding to understand the patient’s treatment needs. Care teams then provide education, adherence support, and proactive monitoring using clinical data, patient-reported insights, and analytics. Support is tailored to treatment response, risk level, and patient needs to improve outcomes.
We use clinical data, patient-reported insights, and technology-enabled analytics to understand each patient’s needs and level of risk. Stable patients may receive routine monitoring, while higher-risk patients receive proactive outreach, education, adherence support, or clinical follow-up. This helps care teams prioritize support and personalize care.
We coordinate through EMR-integrated workflows, shared care plans, and timely data-driven insights that keep providers, clinics, care managers, and pharmacy teams aligned. Our team functions as part of the multidisciplinary care team, both remotely and on-site in clinic, to support communication, close care gaps, and ensure patients receive coordinated, proactive support.
We scale through standardized clinical workflows, shared quality metrics, and technology-enabled dashboards that help teams monitor performance and identify variation across sites. Data, automation, and AI-enabled insights help prioritize patients who need more support, so care teams can stay proactive and personalized even as the model grows.
Behind the scenes, our clinical teams use data and analytics to monitor care quality, identify patients who may need extra support, and improve how care is delivered. These insights help us track progress, spot potential risks earlier, streamline workflows, and support more timely, personalized clinical decisions, all with the goal of improving patient outcomes and the care experience.
Health system partners interested in research studies or quality improvement projects can initiate a collaboration by contacting their Shields regional operations leadership team or the Shields clinical outcomes team. The team works with partners to identify clinical areas of interest and available data before designing and executing a study. Results are presented at national conferences.
Shields has presented outcomes research and quality improvement projects at national conferences, including NASP, Asembia, Pharmacy Quality Alliance, ASHP, NCODA, and NACFC. We have also published our peer-reviewed journals, including JAMA Network Open, Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy, Journal of Pharmacy Practice, and JAPhA.
Emerging clinical guidelines, the latest literature, real-world evidence, and insights from patient outcomes are continuously evaluated and integrated into standardized clinical practice to advance patient care and establish evidence-based best practices.
