Tell us about you.
Hello, rightway team. I'm Hamel Patel and I'm the Senior Director of Strategic Accounts and I'm based out of Atlanta, Georgia. I'm responsible for our relationship with Tyson Foods as a whole from implementation, ongoing business operations, clinical and strategic partnerships. This includes understanding Tyson foods pharmacy benefits today, understanding their goals over the next several years and strategically aligning our growth objectives to continue to evolve our PB M offering to our clients and lowering drug costs for our members. You may wonder what this really includes. I'll take a moment to share some thoughts. You've heard of Scott mentioning a 340 B solution, Kristen and Doug talking about a biosimilar strategy. What is neat and different that right way gets to plug into is that Tyson Foods has eight clinics around the country that support the 880,000 members. We will be working directly with those practitioners and clinicians in driving appropriate utilization of medications, partnering with Tyson to monitor and report on health outcomes and much more. This helps further establish our place in the industry and differentiates us from all others in improving cost and care and not just processing prescriptions.
Why Rightway?
Why Right way. Oh, that's simple. Right way is an organization that is committed to lowering drug costs and getting patients appropriate care. For many years, I've witnessed a health care industry where clinical and business alignment just doesn't work together. I joined right way. As I've known many individuals in this organization and their personal objectives of changing this industry. I joined right way to be part of this team of smart, hard working individuals that have a passion for wanting change every day. I get to be a part of that team and is committed to making a difference one step at a time about Tyson's implementation.
Tell us about Tyson's implementation.
The Tyson implementation overall has been an interesting one. You know, when we first began this implementation, we recognized that this is an organization that has been with the same PB M for over 20 years. And while updates were made to keep with industry trends, to an extent, there was opportunity to not only have Tyson foods get to where the market is but to prepare for future considerations in this space. Major milestones that we have completed include understanding their current benefits, clinical and operational building care pod teams, working with their communications team and change management teams supporting open enrollment. This has been a huge lift and a one that has been overall, a great experience for right way. And Tyson, they have been wonderful partners and we've gone from initial discussions of current benefits, creating many data feeds coding, custom logic and drug lists. We have executed the implementation agreement with the home stretch of our PB M contract. We have successfully passed our first audit from AON, their consultant working on our second one and one more to go. Initial testing of the benefits has been successful. We've recently completed their transition plan. These are members who will be impacted by having different drugs on the formulary and members who obtain drugs from a pharmacy that is not in the network. We are less than two months away from go live and now a strong emphasis on testing and quality assurance.
What are the major challenges associated with Tyson's implementation?
testing and quality assurance. The major challenges associated with Tyson's implementation, I find that implementations as large in custom as this. The major challenge is the lack of communication and understanding when there are multiple parties involved. For example, Tyson has health strategies in AM as PB M consultants and Mercer as their financial and budget consultants. When these parties don't communicate between finalist RP offer to what we have today. We spend much time working to get alignment between client, client consultant and ourselves. Nothing we can't work through but ultimately takes away and delays. Uh The time that we use to get us ready for one on one, you may ask, are there any risks with Tyson's implementation? Absolutely. I've been part of implementations where there are many things that go wrong and then some where it's really minimal waiting for eligibility from UHC for, for example, which then leads us to not be able to process claims, coding logic that is missed due to client documentation or intent that is not understood while we do a lot of work to minimize these risks. I can tell you with certainty that this team and the way we manage implementation, we will have the ability to solve quickly and work through any kinks that may arise. I have full confidence that we will launch Tyson Food successfully,
Are there any asks you have for the broader organization?
you know, a broader ask that I do have for the organization. Well, that is patience, understanding and support. This team has put together a ton of effort, time and dedication in the way we bring this from implementation to 1/1 and beyond your support in any form, whether it's offering solutions, help answering a question, a high five or a joke will go a long way. Lastly, I want to thank all of you for the support and help that I've received from the entire right way team along this implementation and I cannot wait to celebrate this accomplishment with you after go live.
