SectyrHub LicenseTrak saves Amber Specialty Pharmacy hundreds of hours managing, renewing licenses

Amber Specialty Pharmacy offers personalized patient care, access to medications, and clinical support for rare diseases, oncology, neurology, transplants, immunology, fertility and more. Founded in 1998, the Omaha, Nebraska-based specialty pharmacy–a sister company of Hy-Vee Pharmacy Solutions–includes six locations serving patients in 50 U.S. states and Puerto Rico.

Approximately five years ago, Amber Specialty Pharmacy began using SectyrHub^® LicenseTrak^® compliance software to manage accreditations, report on incidents, and track the expiration and renewal of professional and facility licenses. Before tapping SectyrHub LicenseTrak, Amber Specialty Pharmacy managed these tasks manually with spreadsheets, to-do lists, and written reminders. With pharmacies spread across several states, managers in Omaha would have to periodically check paper-based logs and travel to verify multiple licenses for clinicians, technicians, and businesses. The manual process offered no easy way to capture a view of where Amber Specialty Pharmacy stood with dozens of licenses held by each clinician. And validating data for keeping accreditations required a burdensome manual effort each year.

“Maintaining accreditations means meeting a changing set of requirements every year for specialty pharmacies,” says Kelli Wyant, Pharm.D., CSP, BCMAS, senior vice president of Operations for Amber Specialty Pharmacy.

For example, URAC released its Specialty Pharmacy Accreditation 5.0 in 2022, and in 2023, the Accreditation Commission for Health Care (ACHC) made annual updates to its portfolio of standards. To meet annual requests from accrediting bodies, Wyant’s colleagues log in to SectyrHub LicenseTrak, extract data, and run reports documenting an array of things including the resolution of patient incidents. Amber Specialty Pharmacy can sort and export reports, which includes everything URAC and its third-party auditor require to confirm compliance with the accrediting body’s standards. Automating this process also helps Amber Specialty Pharmacy achieve its internal quality standards. For example, with reports from SectyrHub LicenseTrak, managers know staff are notifying patients about investigating a complaint within the five-day mark set by Medicare.

“With accreditation, there are tasks to meet each standard whether it’s an incident, maintenance of equipment, whatever,” Wyant adds. “Sectyr added a field for the equipment maintenance standard, so we can run a report showing our URAC logs detailing how we’re cleaning equipment daily and showing the technician is signing off.”

Automating license management

To validate licenses for its clinicians and technicians beyond the point of hire, Amber Specialty Pharmacy also runs monthly verifications with SectyrHub LicenseTrak. The compliance software’s Automated License Verification feature allows Amber Specialty Pharmacy staff to authenticate licenses and certifications every 30 days. If a clinician’s license requires renewal, SectyrHub LicenseTrak sends a notification email alerting the staff members as well as their supervisor. If staff members do not renew their license, then as part of the monthly primary source verification, the system will email them as well as an administrative user for SectyrHub LicenseTrak. The process works similarly for a facility license and a designated point of contact for the business receives an alert.

“Verification is critical because, without an active license, we can be disciplined for shipping medications into a state,” Wyant adds. “Having Automated License Verification for multiple state licenses probably saves us 20 to 40 hours per month.”

Wyant also notes that SectyrHub LicenseTrak makes it easier than other software products to pull reports for her organization’s pharmacies.

“Technically, we’re two companies: Hy-Vee Pharmacy Solutions and Amber Specialty Pharmacy,” remarks Wyant. “For our purposes, we operate as one. But, sometimes, it’s a struggle with products other than Sectyr’s to have both our companies in one system and get the data we need for each business.”