January 12th marked a huge milestone for us at Shields, as we announced our acquisition of Excelera, an organization whose mission and values align with our own, to advance health system specialty pharmacy. Together, our combined company will serve over 60 health systems spanning 43 states and addresses 700+ hospitals working together to provide better outcomes for specialty patients.
Introducing Excelera
Shields is excited to welcome Excelera to our family! With 28 health systems across the country, Excelera knocks down the barriers that prevent access to payor and drug manufacturers for their members, and provides additional advisory services to help their health systems specialty pharmacies grow.
As the second-largest network of hospital-based specialty pharmacies in the country, Excelera built a nationwide health system network that values a collaborative approach to transforming the way health systems deliver care for patients struggling with chronic illnesses.
“The most important part is that Excelera and Shields have the same mission and vision, which is to enable hospitals to provide patients with integrated specialty care that improves outcomes, drives adherence and lowers total medical expense,” said Stephen West, Shields Chief Strategy Officer.
While our companies share many similarities, the key difference is that Shields provides on-site pharmacy management services while Excelera relies on the health system to staff and manage their owned specialty pharmacy. Both models seek to drive growth, improve patient outcomes, and support our partners’ specialty pharmacy programs, which is the primary reason to come together… to provide more resources, and eventually more robust offerings to our health system partners across the United States.
Sharing Best Practices
There’s an opportunity to reach even more specialty patients as we combine Excelera’s extensive access portfolio with our best-in-class care model. As we begin to share our expertise and best practices, we will enable our organization to have even more meaningful relationships with payors, manufacturers and others in the industry, helping us reach even more key patient populations with critical therapies. Together, we will be developing new ways to partner with payors, manufacturers and health systems to drive proprietary outcome-based solutions and new service models.
“Excelera brings more than 25 health system members to Shields’ more than 40,” said Lee Cooper, CEO, Shields Health Solutions. “Together, the more than 60 systems represent a significant percent of the of the total market opportunity. The potential for collaboration and best practice sharing between all those health systems will continue to lead to better economics for providers and much improved clinical quality outcomes for almost one million potential patients.”
Our goal is patient-centric care and how we can all be a part of the equation to provide better outcomes for specialty patients. Our ability to help more patients means that together we will gather more insights on how to move the needle on key metrics such as adherence, time to therapy, and intervention acceptance rate – all of which can lower out of pocket expenses and result in better outcomes.
Looking Toward the Future
Since announcing the news, the receptivity from both the Excelera members and the industry has been tremendous! We look forward to working with our 60+ health systems to continue our positive impact on specialty pharmacy and specialty patients.
“Excelera has incredible employees that have done incredible things for their hospital partners. I’m excited to have their talent and expertise on the team. Together with our collective health system partners, we’ll have the best minds working together to advance industry and help bring better care to more specialty patients across the country,” added Stephen West, Shields Chief Strategy Officer.
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