Drugs to fight Alzheimer’s and other debilitating illnesses are the future — and so are in-office infusion centers.

Earlier this month Biogen and Esai announced the results of a clinical trial showing that their new experimental Alzheimer’s drug slowed the progression of the uniformly fatal neurological disease over the course of 18 months. It’s potentially a big moment for the pharmaceutical companies, whose new announcement appears to overturn previously-released data showing that the drug had no statistically significant benefit at 12 months.

Alzheimer’s is, sadly, an enormous, and rapidly-growing market, and whoever is first to market with a drug that can reliably slow its progression will save a lot of lives and generate significant revenue as a result. As you can imagine, Biogen and Esai aren’t the only players in the game; Pfizer, Roche, and Eli Lilly among others are deep in the drug development process — none of which have yet produced a product that can consistently outperform a placebo. So, while there’s a long way to go before an Alzheimer’s-beater hits the market, Biogen and Esai’s breakthrough is a definite step in the right direction.

Improving Quality of Life with In-Office Infusion Therapy Administration

Almost as important as developing new treatments is figuring out how to effectively deliver them to patients. These drugs will inevitably be injectable or infusable, which, by and large, is a huge pain for patients. These days, it usually involves either a roomful of cumbersome infusion equipment and the very expensive services of an in-home nurse, or an inconvenient trip to the hospital that rather inappropriately places imminently terminal patients alongside non-terminal patients. This is a cost that patients will grudgingly pay for lifesaving medication, but they’re not happy about it — nor should they be.

Thankfully, a better option exists. In-office infusion centers are everything that hospital outpatient infusion centers and home infusions aren’t: convenient, comfortable and cost-effective. Obviously, these infusion centers aren’t just useful for potential future Alzheimer’s treatments; there are dozens of infusion treatments that patients could be undergoing in your office today. As the population ages, and healthcare — particularly injectable pharmaceutical spending — continues to explode, the potential for patients and providers to benefit and profit from infusion centers will grow in kind. For business- and patient-minded doctors, it’s an obvious next step.

Managing Your In-Office Infusion Center

The most common mistake that doctors make when getting into the infusion center market is to try to do everything themselves. Doctors are doctors — not administrators, technicians or managers. Infusion centers can be incredible profit centers, but it’s all-too-easy to get bogged down in the details of hiring nurses, chasing down accounts receivable, haggling over insurance claims or any of dozens and dozens of tiny administrative details that can potentially trip up a practice. Because of all that, it makes a lot more sense to partner with an infusion-center management company with specific expertise in running every aspect of in-office infusion centers.

OI Infusion will do it all for you: set up the equipment, hire the staff, handling the administrative details, submit the insurance claims, and give you greater control over your legal liability. It’s a win: your patients get a better way to receive life-changing drugs (and the improved outcomes that come with that) and the partner doctor gets happier, healthier patients, and a thriving ancillary business. Contact OI Infusion today to find out how our team of infusion center management experts can help you provide the best care possible to your Alzheimer's patients.