Ending the Home Infusion-Specialty Divide
Holly Wieneke, RPh, Senior Principal Product Manager
Ashley Diermeier, AVP, Pharmacy Sales
Inovalon
Infusion and specialty pharmacy are no longer operating in separate worlds. As therapies grow in complexity and sites of care become more fluid, patients increasingly move between home, ambulatory, and hospital-based settings. Coverage is also shifting more frequently between medical and pharmacy benefits, raising the operational demands required to keep care moving smoothly.
In 2024, specialty drugs accounted for 75% of the more than 7,000 drugs in the pipeline waiting to come to market.1 As more specialty therapies reach patients through infusion settings, organizations are being asked to manage specialty-level complexity with systems that were never designed for it.
The hidden cost of fragmentation
Prior authorizations, benefits investigation, clinical documentation, scheduling, monitoring, and adherence now demand tight coordination across multidisciplinary teams. Yet too often, these processes are supported by disconnected legacy platforms.
Over time, fragmentation becomes more than an inconvenience. Communication gaps widen as patients move across care sites, manual workarounds become routine, staff spend more time navigating systems than coordinating care, and patients wait longer to start therapy.
A new approach
Simplifying the union of infusion and specialty pharmacies starts with connecting workflows. An end-to-end system that brings financial, clinical, and operational workflows together creates a more predictable path from referral to treatment while reducing rework and delays. Just as important, true scalability depends on connectivity and easier data flow among care teams.
Built for what comes next
As infusion and specialty therapies continue to converge, delays are no longer just operational challenges. They directly affect patient access, staff capacity, and long-term sustainability.
At NHIA 2026, discover strategies to move faster, connect workflows, and support timely patient care as infusion and specialty pharmacies come together. Join Inovalon at booth #401 to explore how simpler, more connected approaches can help organizations scale with confidence.
1 Redefining Care Delivery: How Infusion and Specialty Pharmacies Are Converging, Christen Roy, PharmD and Holly Wieneke, RPh, Pharmacy Times, July 24, 2025, https://www.pharmacytimes.com/view/redefining-care-delivery-how-infusion-and-specialty-pharmacies-are-converging
