Why a pharmacist was tapped to spearhead patient excellence at Boehringer Ingelheim

As a trained pharmacist, Deborah Reardon, vice president of patient excellence at German pharma giant Boehringer Ingelheim, has long had a unique viewpoint on the different sides of developing and dispensing drugs.

“When you’re a pharmacist, unlike other healthcare professionals, you have a really detailed understanding of the science behind how drugs work. You also have firsthand knowledge of the complexity of access to prescription medicine,” she said. “And I think when you pair those distinct things together, you understand how you need to transform what we do as a company to really drive a different patient experience.”

She’s now applying that perspective to leading the newly created “patient excellence” pillar within Boehringer Ingelheim that combines every team with “a critical patient focus,”such as advocacy, support and education, in an effort to change the way patients interact with the company.

“We’ve now brought all those teams together to be a powerhouse of making sure we’re co-creating and driving insights into the patient journey throughout the entirety of the process, which puts a distinct focus and importance on that, where it was more disparate within the organization before,” she said.

Reardon took the lead of the group in September after holding a number of other roles within Boehringer Ingelheim, most recently as director of access solutions. Prior to coming to Boehringer Ingelheim, she was a hospital pharmacist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where she provided recommendations on antibiotic and antifungal dosing for the high-profile case of Charla Nash, who underwent a face and hand transplant after being mauled by a chimpanzee.

In her new position, Reardon is focused on the entire patient experience, from early development through commercialization and beyond.

Boehringer Ingelheim recently made news when it announced it would cap out-of-pocket costs at $35 per month for the company’s inhaler products, which include the COPD blockbuster Spiriva, after Congress launched an investigation into the high price of inhalers. AstraZeneca followed suit less than two weeks later, and GSK has also since announced it will do the same 

On the flip side, a new lawsuit accuses the company of improperly submitting patents in an effort to delay generic competition for Combivent Respimat and Spiriva Respimat.

Here, Reardon discusses her position at Boehringer Ingelheim and how her role as a pharmacist shapes that work.

PHARMAVOICE: Can you tell us about this new group and your role?

DEBORAH REARDON: Our patient excellence team looks at how we reimagine the patient experience at Boehringer and transform lives in a different way. What I mean by that is looking at how we become an integral part of every patient we touch in this ecosystem and provide an ideal patient experience, from helping them with a diagnosis; getting into our clinical trials; looking at our medicines and making sure we’re developing them in a way that will impact their quality of life; looking at how we provide support around navigating the healthcare environment; and all those kinds of things. 

How do we look at patient experience in a different way and put a focus on it? I sit on the executive team and bring that voice to the executive leadership group to say, ‘Are we doing what is of the best interest for the patient? Are we looking at this from a patient lens and not from a Boehringer lens?’

Can you give us an example of how this plays out?

When we look at all of our support programs, they are for all patients on our products. So when we think about our strategy around how we deliver patient support to all patients, especially patients who have health equity disparities, have low access to care, who may fall through the cracks in the healthcare system, [we need to ask] how do we support them along that journey? [One way is] having financial support specialists in our programs to ensure those programs are helping patients find options for affordability. One of the biggest barriers to patients not getting therapies they need is affordability options and understanding their insurance.