Ian Manners Explains How Vivor Empowers Providers and Financial Navigators

Vivor helps patients receive financial assistance by focusing on empowering the providers and making it easier for financial navigators to do their job, said Ian Manners, founder and CEO of Vivor.

Transcript

How is VIvor helping patients receive financial assistance?

We really focus on empowering providers. So, we find that our tools are most effective when they’re paired up with a great financial navigator or financial advocate who works right there in the private practice or in the hospital. That’s someone who can meet with the patient in person, really make sure that they’re intervening early on in a treatment process or even before treatment is begun.

We really make it easier for the financial advocate or navigator to do his or her job better. We give them the tools so they know exactly what kinds of answers to provide for their patient. We give them print outs that they can share with patients with information about financial resources, pin codes that the patient can then go enter on a mobile device or a laptop at home once they’ve had a chance to digest everything and talk it over with family members and caregivers.

Really, it’s all about empowering that person who is at the bedside, to do a better job of working with the patient.

What are the most common disease states you see among patients Vivor is working with?

We cover the gamut. We cover all specialty drugs, all disease areas that are made available through nonprofit foundations nationally. We track around 700 different sources of assistance. But oncology happens to be where the need is most focused, most acute. Around half of the resources that we track are in oncology, and I would say that the majority of the programs that we’re working with on the provider side are cancer centers.

That said, they tend to work with a large range of patient populations, just because when they’re operating in an infusion center, most likely they’re going to be treating patients with rheumatoid arthritis, with multiple sclerosis, many other indications where there are infused medicines.