Q: Where did you go to college/graduate school?
University of Montana, Missoula, MT
Q: Where do you live?
Sun River, Montana
Q: If a friend came to visit you in your hometown, where would you take them? Where would you take them in your state?
Great Falls is surrounded by river, lake and mountain recreation. Wolf Creek Canyon, Holter Lake and Gates of The Mountains are close by. I tell everyone coming to MT they need to see Glacier National Park which is 3 hours away – put it on your bucket list!
Q: Tell us about your health care facility.
Benefis is a nonprofit health system with a comprehensive continuum of care over a large geographic region in Montana. This includes 226 staffed acute care beds, two outpatient surgery centers, a cancer center with infusion, multiple outpatient clinics, non-oncology infusion centers, long-term care, assisted living, hospice residential facility and two critical access hospitals. A diverse portfolio of pharmacy services including an entity owned ambulatory, specialty and home infusion pharmacies support patients in all these areas.
We have a high percentage of governmental payers (77%) and uninsured patients with a large number of Medicaid and disabled patients that enables Benefis to be eligible for the 340B program.
Benefis has a strong commitment to the community demonstrated by our breadth of services and charitable mission to provide emergency and health care services regardless of a patient’s financial status and ability to pay. We have a generous Financial Assistance Policy that provides care either for free or at a discounted rate for patients who apply and meet FAP criteria (400% FPL for medical, 500% FPL for Specialty Pharmacy).
We serve a large rural area with many patients who drive many miles to receive care. Our demographic also includes a high percentage of older adults. We are unique in that we strive to provide “synergistic services” in one location such as our Women’s and Children’s center that includes onsite OB/women’s health, pediatricians plus pediatric therapies, mammography and a lab all in one building. Our Goodnow Healthy Aging center will open this year where older adults will be able to access a geriatrician, therapies, lab, and geriatric certified pharmacist in a team-based care environment. This center will include a unique, first-in-Montana “healthy aging” holistic medicine program meant to keep middle-aged adults healthy, active and independent as they age – including those with early onset dementia.
Q: What are some concrete examples of how your facility has benefited from the 340B program?
As an organization with such a high governmental payer mix, cost control is not just important but critical to the survival of our system and breadth of services. 340B savings (particularly on high-cost specialty drugs that continue to grow in cost and market share) is critical to our mission.
340B discounts on specialty drugs was the greatest factor in enabling Benefis to provide our own local specialty pharmacy services. Prior to opening our own specialty pharmacy, our patients were waiting weeks or even months to begin crucial oncology or other chronic condition treatments. Those “drug in hand” turn around times are now 48-72 hours, and we frequently get positive, grateful feedback from patients and providers.
Our outpatient pharmacy can provide insulin and testing supplies or other time sensitive medications to patients discharging from the hospital who do not have the ability to pay or must wait for their pharmacy to open.
Besides medication – Benefis may provide a taxi, bus ride or lodging for a patient to accommodate a safe landing discharge.
Given our location and extensive service area, Benefis offers free accommodations such as our Gift of Life Housing and Gift of Life RV sites for patients and families.
Overall, our mission is to provide a full set of specialist services in our region so that Montanans do not have to travel long distances or out of state to get access to care. In many cases, patients just simply would not be able to. It is important to maintain updated, comfortable facilities, advanced surgical and imaging technology, an integrated, patient friendly EHR as well as a full portfolio of specialist providers. Benefis expanded endoscopy and dermatology services recently which has drastically cut patient wait times for preventative screenings and treatments. We also recently added a PET-CT, a nuclear medicine tool that can provide a detailed 3D map of early cancer growth as well as monitor progress of treatment of certain cancers.
It would not be possible to maintain all these healthcare services without our savings from the 340B program.
Q: Tell us what makes you most proud of your work and your organization.
I am most proud of our obvious commitment to healing and maintaining the health of our community – paired with how we don’t sit back and wait to react – we find a need and figure out a way to meet it, even if we are the first to do it. I love that we are creative and strategic about growth and tackling challenges.
Many if not most of our leadership, employees and providers are home-grown Montanans or adopted in and love living here. We’re literally caring for our own families, loved ones and friends. I truly believe our leadership from the top down has the best interest of our organization, employees and community at heart and at the forefront of our mission and strategies year over year.
Q: How has your facility benefited from the services of your 340B vendors/contractors?
Benefis’ 340B program is diverse and extremely valuable to our organization. It is difficult to find local expertise in such a complex program. My partnership with 340B vendors/contractors/consultants has been crucial to maintaining a compliant, thriving program. We tend to be selective about who we partner with and expect results, responsiveness and ownership in our organization’s success. Visante has been one of those special, invaluable partners for the past five years.
Q: What advice do you have for 340B covered entities or staff that are new to the program?
Given the complexity and value of a 340B program to an organization- you cannot go it alone. Especially in our current environment. It took me years to build my knowledge and confidence in 340B. Do not operate as an island – engage with organizations such as 340B Health, 340B Report, sign up for list serves, network and find partners to support you. Most often I have found that the investment in a support service or consultant pays for itself multiple times over – including mitigating risks of compliance issues or audit findings which are not only expensive but take tons of time to unravel.
I’d also say do not expect to just “let your program run” – there is always opportunity for optimization. And when you find an optimization opportunity -track your savings from what you implemented or changed. That work is great political capital when you need more resources, want to expand a patient assistance or service- or just recognition of the value you bring to the organization.
To learn more about Benefis, visit its website here. For questions, Jamie can be reached at jamieleonard@benefis.org
