SUSTAINABILITY AND EFFICIENCY SECOND PLACE WINNERS:

Nicole Kennedy & Garrett Wells
Bliss Murphy Cancer Centre

Nicole Kennedy and Garrett Wells were awarded a 2nd Place HOPE Award for their Sustainability and/or Efficiency efforts and project entitled, ‘Oncology Drug Rebate Management’.

Nicole and team identified an opportunity to improve the oncology drug rebate process for NL’s cancer care program. The historical process involved the calculation of rebates manually, leading to delays and missed revenue. The workload was complex due to different rebate agreement implementation dates or timeframes, as well as different calculation processes. Given the continual increase in oncology drug therapies becoming available, Nicole and team sought out a solution through NLHS’s Innovation Summit to work with an innovative partner and create an automated solution that could help streamline the process.

Design: Over an 18-month period, the team developed a platform that could integrate the purchase data from our four provincial zones into one database, incorporate the different rebate terms and structures, calculate this for each oncology drug, and produce an automated result for us to use during our funding processes. We also wanted the platform to generate reports to reflect oncology drug usage.

Results: The platform went live in December 2023, enabling NLHS to conduct our rebate management in an automated process. In our retrospective review, we were able to identify $600,000 of missed rebate revenue. We are more efficient in calculating our rebate processes, which improves the accuracy of our oncology drug budget, leading to reinvestment into funding additional high priority drugs for our patients.

This project allowed NLHS to be timelier and more accurate with our rebates, eliminate the potential for lost revenue from missed rebates, and to use these rebates to continue to strive for timely oncology drug listings for the patients of our province.

SUSTAINABILITY AND EFFICIENCY SECOND PLACE WINNERS:

Nicole Kennedy & Garrett Wells
Bliss Murphy Cancer Centre

Nicole Kennedy and Garrett Wells were awarded a 2nd Place HOPE Award for their Sustainability and/or Efficiency efforts and project entitled, ‘Oncology Drug Rebate Management’.

Nicole and team identified an opportunity to improve the oncology drug rebate process for NL’s cancer care program. The historical process involved the calculation of rebates manually, leading to delays and missed revenue. The workload was complex due to different rebate agreement implementation dates or timeframes, as well as different calculation processes. Given the continual increase in oncology drug therapies becoming available, Nicole and team sought out a solution through NLHS’s Innovation Summit to work with an innovative partner and create an automated solution that could help streamline the process.

Design: Over an 18-month period, the team developed a platform that could integrate the purchase data from our four provincial zones into one database, incorporate the different rebate terms and structures, calculate this for each oncology drug, and produce an automated result for us to use during our funding processes. We also wanted the platform to generate reports to reflect oncology drug usage.

Results: The platform went live in December 2023, enabling NLHS to conduct our rebate management in an automated process. In our retrospective review, we were able to identify $600,000 of missed rebate revenue. We are more efficient in calculating our rebate processes, which improves the accuracy of our oncology drug budget, leading to reinvestment into funding additional high priority drugs for our patients.

This project allowed NLHS to be timelier and more accurate with our rebates, eliminate the potential for lost revenue from missed rebates, and to use these rebates to continue to strive for timely oncology drug listings for the patients of our province.