How AssistPoint® Transformed Patient Financial Assistance at Emerald Coast Cancer Center

By Gia Seymour

Medical billing specialist Jeremy Douglas has been managing patient financial assistance at Emerald Coast Cancer Center since 2021. It’s a demanding role, especially in an oncology setting where a majority of patients have conditions requiring treatment with costly specialty medications that would be financially out of reach without assistance.

“We see upwards of 100 patients a day,” says Jeremy. “I handle all financial assistance for patients who have a high copay or can’t afford drugs—whatever the situation might be—as well as our recently-expanded dispensary, so I can dispense oral and injectable medications using patients’ insurance.”

In mid 2024, Emerald Coast adopted AssistPoint^®, an all-in-one software platform that empowers healthcare organizations to quickly and easily find, secure, and manage financial assistance and access services for patients. And in the past year, it’s completely transformed Jeremy’s job—in all the best ways.

“I love this program,” says Jeremy. “It’s so easy to use and it’s helped our patients a lot. I recommend AssistPoint 100 percent.”

Here’s why:

1. A faster, easier, more effective way to manage financial assistance

Before AssistPoint, much of Jeremy’s work was manual.

“It was a lot of sticky notes and spreadsheets,” he says. “AssistPoint automates things. It makes the patient assistance process organized and efficient at every step, which is literally the opposite of what it was like before.

“I really like that with AssistPoint, everything is integrated with our practice systems on both the clinical and billing side. That integration saves so much time. AssistPoint pulls over all the patient information so I don’t have to jump around between systems to gather information and then retype everything—it’s already right there.”

The need for a more centralized system was a driving factor in Emerald Coast’s decision to seek out a financial assistance platform, and to ultimately choose AssistPoint.

“I used to rely on a gigantic list of bookmarks I had made for all the disease funds and manufacturer patient support programs, and I’d drive myself crazy trying to remember what website I saw what funding opportunity on,” Jeremy remembers.

“There was so much information, and it changed so frequently, that it was impossible to keep in a spreadsheet. Looking back, it’s unbelievable how many different things I used to have to click on just to find assistance for a patient.”

Now with AssistPoint, everything Jeremy needs is in one place.

At the click of a button, the AssistPoint Search Wizard rapidly searches more than 10,000 programs to identify all available assistance opportunities based on a patient’s demographic information, diagnosis, regimen, and insurance type.

Beyond being comprehensive and easy to search, Jeremy loves that the library of assistance in AssistPoint is reliable and up to date.

“I often used free patient assistance search tools in the past, and they were so delayed,” he says. “We probably missed so many funding opportunities before AssistPoint.”

When funding is unavailable, Jeremy can add patients to the Assistance Watchlist so that when funding opens up, he can quickly enroll them without having to repeat the search process.

“The Assistance Watchlist is my favorite feature for sure,” says Jeremy. “I’ll be working on a prescription and have to tell the doctor and patient that they’re about to have a $1,600 copay or something, but that I’ve put them on the Watchlist. A lot of the time, funding becomes available the very next day, and I only know about it because of AssistPoint.”

AssistPoint closely monitors disease funds, sending out a fund status alert to users within 5 minutes of identifying that a fund has opened up.

“So, even if a fund is only open for a few minutes, which is often the case, AssistPoint lets me act quickly to go in and secure the funding for my patient,” says Jeremy. “Having that quicker access to funding availability makes such a difference in my ability to set patients up for success.”

Another AssistPoint feature Jeremy loves is digital integration, which dramatically speeds up the application, enrollment, and fulfillment processes. Through partnerships with 17 life science companies, AssistPoint is digitally integrated with many patient support programs, as well as with many disease funds from charitable organizations. All integrated programs use a standardized digital enrollment form that is automatically prepopulated with demographic information from the practice management system.

“Digital integration is great,” he says. “I love that it pulls over all the patient information. There’s usually not much that I have to type in, if I have to type in anything at all. Then I can just take the iPad to the doctor and they can sign the application digitally and move on. It’s so helpful.”

With digital integration, program communication delays are reduced, award approval notifications are sped up, and up-to-date award balances are readily available.

In addition to accelerating the search and enrollment processes, AssistPoint provides a centralized location to view and manage all financial activity for a specific patient with the Patient Journey Tab.

“Having everything in one place makes everything less stressful for me day to day,” says Jeremy. “Plus, it really helps when I’m off and my backup takes over for me. Or when I have to work remotely—which is really rare, but it did happen earlier this year when we had a bad snowstorm. Those situations are easy to manage now that we’re using AssistPoint.

“With AssistPoint, the whole financial assistance process runs much more smoothly.”

2. Offering hope and help to patients at a challenging time in their lives

AssistPoint has made Jeremy’s job easier, but what he loves most about it is how it helps him help patients.

“Imagine having cancer and needing a specialty treatment, and somebody tells you you owe $5,000—or more,” he says, stepping into the patient’s shoes.

“The possibility of a gigantic bill is going to make you very anxious, and that’s certainly not going to help you recover.”

With AssistPoint, more Emerald Coast patients are getting the financial assistance they qualify for, and getting it as quickly as possible.

“Before AssistPoint, we just couldn’t capture everybody,” he says of trying to proactively work up patients using his former time-consuming, manual system. “I think we were missing a lot of people and opportunities for financial assistance.”

But because AssistPoint makes the process so efficient, Jeremy is now able to assess every patient for financial assistance before they ever even receive a bill. And he’s confident he can now find all the assistance his patients may qualify for.

“There are so many programs I wasn’t even aware of before we started using AssistPoint,” he says.

Even when funding isn’t immediately available, AssistPoint gives Jeremy—and his patients—reason to be optimistic.

“We recently had a patient come in to start treatment and I was going over the costs with her, and she was telling me about her situation and how she couldn’t afford anything” he shares. “At first, there was no funding open, so we were going through the process of trying to get her approved for a free drug program. But not every drug she was going to be on would be covered by that, so she was still going to have a substantial cost.

“I told her about the Assistance Watchlist and that I was going to put her on it. She was still upset when she left, but she was a little more hopeful. Two days later, I got an AssistPoint alert that the funding was open for her, and I got her enrolled. When I told her, it was like a night and day turnaround. She went from crying to ecstatic.”

Jeremy has had incredible success with the Watchlist, with funding opening up within a day or two for each patient he’s added to it so far this year. And he loves being able to share that good news.

“It really makes their day to hear that they’re going to be able to get the recommended treatment and that most, if not all, of the cost is going to be covered. It’s such a relief to them because they’re already going through so much with their health, and the financial stress just makes it that much worse.”

“When I put a patient on the Watchlist, it’s great to be able to let them know how much it has helped patients in the past,” he says. “It makes the conversation really hopeful.”

3. Improving the practice revenue stream

Since implementing AssistPoint, Emerald Coast has seen a 95% increase in overall collections.

“AssistPoint has made a huge financial impact for us,” says Jeremy. “I can show our doctors specific examples using the analytics reports of how much assistance I’ve been able to secure for patients, and they love to see it.

“AssistPoint pays itself off, absolutely. I’m able to get more assistance for patients, and I’m able to do it more efficiently than ever before. It’s just awesome.”

“At the end of the day, what matters most to me is that patients are able to afford the care they need,” says Jeremy.

“We want the practice to be successful, of course. But we don’t want patients having to pay outrageous costs—that’s just not right. We want it to work both ways, and AssistPoint makes that happen.

AssistPoint delivers relief for patients and results for the practice

For Jeremy and Emerald Coast Cancer Center, AssistPoint has proven to be more than just a software platform. It’s become a lifeline that supports patients, strengthens the practice, and makes an overwhelming job manageable. By transforming financial assistance from a manual, uncertain process into a streamlined, proactive system, AssistPoint ensures patients have access to the treatments they need without the crushing weight of unaffordable costs. The result is accessible health care for patients, and better financial health for the practice.

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