For CRM Patients, Its Often a Long, Varied Clinical Journey | PBMI 2025

Diagnosis and treatment of an illness is often referred to, somewhat euphemistically, as a patient journey these days.

When it comes to cardiorenal metabolic disease, that journey often takes patients across the healthcare system's varied and pocketed terrain, according to Jennie Barlow, Pharm.D., MBA.

"You're on multiple chronic drugs to manage those conditions. You really are [on] a clinical journey that can touch many different practices and different health systems," Barlow said in an interview last week at the 2025 Pharmacy Benefit Management Annual National Conference in Orlando, Florida.

The involvement with different health systems means that development of interoperability would be especially important for patients with cardiorenal metabolic disease because the "the systems don't talk to each other well right now," Barlow said.

Barlow is associate vice president, pharmacy relations, at Scripius, a pharmacy benefit management company that is part of the Intermountain Health health system. She participated as a panelist in a Sept. 5 session at the PBMI meeting on aligning pharmacy benefits with outcomes in cardiorenal metabolic disease.

Cardiorenal metabolic disease is an umbrella classification that groups cardiac disorders, such as heart failure, with kidney disease and metabolic conditions, such as Type 2 diabetes and obesity. Grouping heart, kidney and metabolic conditions together is acknowledgment that they share risk factors and causative biological mechanisms and that treatment for one type of condition can have a spillover on another.

Barlow and the other panelists at the session discussed the challenges of coordinating benefits for cardiorenal metabolic and the utility of digital tools for managing them. The other panelists were Lissette Lorenzo, Pharm.D., of Abarca Health; Justin Simoncini, MBA, M.P.H., of U.S. Heart and Vascular; and Simon Salgado, MBA, of Welldoc. Michael Baldzicki of Lyceum Health moderated the session.