Kevin Houlihan: Special Episode on the Platform behind Walgreens’ National Colorectal Screening Push

In this special episode, host Kevin Houlihan fields questions on how Workflow Services is supporting a new initiative at Walgreens to expand access to colorectal cancer screening through retail pharmacies. He explains how at-home testing programs like Cologuard make preventative care more accessible, especially for patients who may not regularly see a primary care provider. Through real patient stories and program results, Kevin highlights how pharmacies are evolving into key access points for early detection, better outcomes, and more efficient care delivery across the U.S.

Read Dan's story about one man's colorectal cancer screening journey, which highlights the critical role pharmacies play in closing healthcare gaps: https://www.workflowservices.com/news/dans-story

Learn how to be reimbursement-ready on day 1 for ECAPS at our knowledge hub for pharmacy industry professionals: https://www.workflowservices.com/ecaps

Transcript

Introduction

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hello and welcome to a special episode of the ECAP Swatch podcast. I'm Kevin Hoolhan, CEO at Workflow Services. Just wanted to get on. This is my first solo episode, kind of a mini episode here. We've had some exciting news in my world and in the world I think of care delivery and pharmacy, and had a few questions come in and wanted to share about it. I don't spend that much time talking about what Workflow Services is on our ECAPS podcast, but we have a whole uh passionate group of people that are all focused on supporting an expansion of clinical service delivery in the retail pharmacy setting. And we had some exciting news over the past week that I uh was really happy to share and have had some questions come in and kind of wanted to give a bit more context. So one of the programs that uh we've been supporting, in addition to a lot of the things that we talk about on the eCAPSWatch podcast around low acuity, um, urgent care and point-of-care testing and those sorts of services, is a preventative care program where we uh enable uh pharmacy customers to get access to an understanding around uh screening for colorectal cancer.

Program Overview

SPEAKER_00 1:16

And March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, so it's a special month for that initiative. But for several years, we've been working together with the team at Colagaard, who makes an at-home cancer screening kit uh to make it super easy for people to get that kit if they're eligible. But really, it's also around raising awareness around uh that disease and some of the options to get screened. Um, and in many cases, if you get screened early enough and catch some signals, uh you can uh sometimes get in front of cancer. Um, so the the big news this week is that uh Walgreens has signed on to participate in the program. And we've been working with um hundreds or maybe thousands of pharmacies over the past couple years. Now with Walgreens, we've got more than 10,000 participating pharmacies. But importantly, um it's access to every customer that uh that accesses any of those pharmacies, including Walgreens. So that's a third of the US population now can easily get access to education and awareness about uh colorectal

Walgreens Partnership

SPEAKER_00 2:18

cancer, and then if it makes sense for them, um get easy access to that at-home kit. So just as a little bit of background, um KohlGuard is a kit that gets shipped to your house, and you very easily uh collect a stool sample at home and send it back to the lab, and then they analyze it and give a result around if there's an indication that more follow-up should be needed. It's not um not a test that absolutely everybody can do, but that's one of the things that our program does is help people understand if that's a good option for them or a colonoscopy is a better option. But for folks who um ColaGuard is a great solution, it's uh almost universally no patient cost responsibility. So something like 95% of folks in the US that have health insurance have the test covered at no cost to them. So it's just super convenient. It doesn't take preparation ahead of time. And you can if if you um fill out the the survey and you're eligible, you can order it and get the kit right to your house, uh, usually later later that week. Um, so we've seen some pretty exciting stories across um the history of that program of people getting access to really meaningful results in care and really changing the course of their outcomes. Um, as I mentioned, this is not our eCAPSWatch podcast is really focused on that legislation, which expands um the pharmacy recognition as a provider in the eyes of Medicare for point-of-care testing specifically. Uh, and this is not exactly that, but what I think it does is it represents a commitment from Walgreens to really increase access to care for their customers. Um, and I think it's also another example of the kind of preventative care that is super effective to be delivered in the pharmacy. We've seen in the program that folks who are not having conversations with their primary care provider or maybe don't have one or aren't seeing them, uh, we can we can connect with those patients uh really effectively through the pharmacy and get them access to these kinds of preventative

Pharmacy Access

SPEAKER_00 4:30

care. And so, you know, my view is I lump that all in with super efficient, effective access for a bunch of different kinds of things that might be uh vaccines or medication management or birth control prescriptions or uh, you know, you know, dozens of different kinds of things, but this is another one in that category that really can be impactful. So we've talked a ton around the important role that pharmacies play in the community, and we've seen that there's just great engagement from patients when they get access to this at-home um screening through the program. We've also seen that the pharmacies that are participating have an increase in their colonic prep that happens before a colonoscopy. So there's also people that are engaging and realizing that maybe a colonoscopy is the direction they need to go. And so we're seeing that there's more of those happening. And so in all those cases, we're getting more cancer screening done. And um, and that, you know, that is what we're that's what we're aiming to do, is really make an impact in people's lives. Part of what we do at workflow services is sit in the middle of all that and make it super easy. So the experience for the patient is it might be paired with something else they're doing. They're picking up a medication or they're signing up for another service in the pharmacy, um, or they might just hear that it's important and they can um connect with the pharmacy in a variety of ways and learn more about it and uh get access. But it's all seamless. They fill out, you know, a quick three-question survey. Um, have you had a family history of colon cancer? Have you been screened recently? If not, are you interested? Uh, fill in their mailing information and they can get a kit right to their house. And so it's just such a nice way to super easily um connect all the dots there. And for the pharmacy, it's an opportunity to really make it super easy without having to do distribution um of the kit to increase access to their patients. And so it's just been an awesome program, and we couldn't be more excited of it now. Um, you

Program Impact

SPEAKER_00 6:27

know, so many hundred over a hundred million people in the US are getting um getting services or or um care from pharmacies, and this is another way, another kind of care that they can get. Um we've seen some pretty awesome results. And as the listeners and viewers know, I love stories and I love getting stories from um a lot of our guests on the podcast. We have one that we call Dan's story. We had a patient called Dan. I'll I'll try and get a link to this story um in the show notes here. But he had a conversation with his physician, and the physician said, um, you know, you you really are due for a colonoscopy. A side note on that, that's 45 and older now. The guidelines for that recently changed. Many many folks don't know that. So anyone that is 45 may not have been screened yet. But he said, okay, I'm interested uh in a colonoscopy, and they booked it, but it was um 11 or 12

Patient Story

SPEAKER_00 7:24

months out. There's many areas of the country where you have to wait quite a while to get a colonoscopy. He then, a couple weeks later, heard from a participating pharmacy that they could give him easy access to coligard. So he chose to go that route, got a cola guard to his house, did the kid, sent it back in, and got a result back saying the cola guard result was positive. This doesn't mean he has colon cancer, but it means, hey, have a conversation with your doctor that you got a positive cola guard. So he reconnected with his physician, was able to get put to the top of the list for colonoscopies, quickly got in, and during the colonoscopy, um, they found some pre-cancerous polyps and just routinely removed those during the colonoscopy before they turned into cancer. So, what I think that really represents is an efficient coordination of care across the continuum. Um, he still ended up getting a colonoscopy and still was getting care from his doctor, but was able to get sort of prioritize the right kind of access and get more insights early on because of the availability of this kind of test through his pharmacy. And so we're excited to just hear more and more of those sorts of stories. Those are stories uh a few episodes back, we had um Summer on, and she was telling a story about how while she was vaccinating one of her patients, the gal said she wasn't feeling great. And um, because of Summer's expertise and her role as a caregiver, um, she was able to understand, hey, you probably have a UTI and quickly guided that patient in to get other care um that way. And I think these are just example after example of how the pharmacy is at a position where it's um in many cases, in many cases, meeting meeting the patients where they are, and it's just an access point that is uh unique and special.

Future of Pharmacy

SPEAKER_00 9:11

And so as we continue to get more and more things that we can support and different kinds of services and better and better outcomes, I'm just excited that these sorts of examples help bolster the case for more and more scope recognition. Um, one of the things on a recent podcast that Rick Gates talked about was that he his vision is that pharmacists should be practicing at the level of their education, which is a slightly different phrase. Many folks use the level of their license. But what he correctly pointed out is license can vary from state to state and even sometimes payer to payer. And really let's break down the barriers and get these pharmacy, pharmacists, and pharmacy teams um engaging with patients at the degree that which to which they're educated. Um and let's find ways to expand the license, the scope and uh the legislative requirements around what they can do. And so we've just we're really excited about this. Wanted to kind of share our excitement and provide a bit more details and insight. And although it's not directly related to necessarily point-of-care testing and uh Medicare, it's just another example of how pharmacists can play a key role in the community and drive um better outcomes. So uh wanted to share that. We're, you know, the eCAPSWASH podcast is going to continue with more guests, and we're gonna be heavily focused on what's going on with that legislation, continues to get more co-sponsors. I think it's very exciting. But it's just a eCAPS is an example of um care delivery in the pharmacy and how that can make a difference in um people's lives across the country and an evolution of the pharmacy business. So um would love for you to engage with uh our content at Workflow Services, Workflowservices.com, reach out to the team if you have questions. If you have a pharmacy that's not participating and you're interested, we'd we'd love to chat with you about that. And uh look forward to more conversations on the eCaps Watch ECAPSWatch podcast. Thanks for listening today, and we'll talk to you soon.