Early Successes in Remote Research: Enabling Enrollment in Clinical Trials
October 30, 2024
What was your experience in healthcare before coming to Synapticure?
Before coming to Synapticure, I worked as a medical assistant and a scribe for over 10 years in a large multispecialty clinic and also briefly in the emergency department. These experiences helped me develop a foundation for many of the skills I use working at Synapticure. Everything from finding the correct documentation to submit with a prior authorization to knowing which phrases and arguments work best for appeals have all been gained from my past experiences working in healthcare as a medical assistant and a scribe.
What made you want to join the Synapticure team?
It didn’t take me a long time working in healthcare to learn about the many obstacles that prevent patients from receiving the best care possible. It becomes unachievable to deliver quality care no matter how dedicated your team is when operating within a system that is designed to maximize quantity over quality. Synapticure’s innovative model allows us to avoid those limitations and gives our team the opportunity to provide the level of care our patients deserve and need.
The exciting model of care drew me in and led me to joining Synapticure, but getting to work with our amazing team has made me even more proud to be part of the crew. Everyone “gets it'' at Synapticure and understands the importance of our broader mission. I’ve never worked with such a dedicated and passionate group of people who are all entirely committed to our goals of providing care for our incredible patients while working alongside the many people at Synapticure and around the world who are fighting neurodegenerative diseases.
What is your role at Synapticure? What does that practically mean on a daily basis?
The majority of my work for Synapticure relates to medications. Several of the medications our physicians prescribe are absent from most formularies, if not all of them. This means they usually require prior authorizations and sometimes appeals for insurance companies to cover them. Many of these medications are also limited-access medications. Rather than simply simply sending a prescription to the corner-store pharmacy like any other drug, we have to send a detailed enrollment to the drug company’s access specialists so they can coordinate between the patient, the insurance, the specialty pharmacy, and Synapticure to help our patients get access to their medications.
My role at Synapticure primarily revolves around coordinating all the different steps of these processes. I meet regularly with the insurance and access teams from the companies who manufacture some of our more frequently prescribed drugs so we can explore the best options for getting them to our patients. With many of the medications we prescribe, such as Radicava and Relyvrio, getting insurance approval can be a huge battle. A lot of my time is spent working on prior authorizations and appeals so our patients’ insurances will cover their medications. This requires filling out forms, providing extensive documentation to support the treatment, spending tons of time communicating with insurances, and much more.
What are the most challenging and rewarding parts of your work?
Depending on the results, the outcomes of our prior authorizations and appeals can be either the most rewarding part of my job or the most challenging. It has been one of the greatest thrills of my career to get patients approved for these incredibly important and unbelievably expensive medications. It’s especially exciting to get approvals for patients who have had to deal with multiple denials for the same medication.
“Fighting with insurance companies can be exhausting and sometimes seems completely futile, but it’s the biggest reward when everyone’s hard work comes together to help our patients get the treatments they need.”
Our team understands the obstacles our patients face in getting what they need because many people at Synapticure have personally taken on these same roadblocks themselves. Our day-to-day work and the difference we’re able to make for patients is truly the greatest reward, but it’s even better knowing the impact that Synapticure can have on the overall battle against neurodegenerative diseases and the general delivery of healthcare for everyone.
What have been some of your proudest moments working at Synapticure?
Getting approvals is really the highlight of my job. Each and every one of them is meaningful, and I’m proud of our wonderful team every single time we get a favorable outcome. Insurance denials have such a disruptive effect on patient care and can make people wonder why they even bother having insurance. The decisions made can sometimes be as shocking and inexplicable as they are devastating. It takes all the different levels of care provided by Synapticure coming together for everything to fall in place for patients to be approved. I’m just the lucky person who gets to turn it all into another approval, and I’m very grateful for the opportunity!
