How operations leaders can prepare for the contact center capacity gaps driven by the increased patient care demands of complex, specialty medications.
Pharmaceutical companies face a quiet operational crisis that has nothing to do with R&D pipelines or regulatory hurdles. Instead, it's a workforce capacity gap within the contact centers that deliver the expanding scope of patient support expected today.
Specialty medicines are projected to represent 43% of global drug spending by 2028 — and more than 55% of total spending in leading developed markets such as the U.S. The GLP-1 class alone has reshaped expectations. An estimated 25 million Americans will be on GLP-1 therapy by 2030, up from roughly 6 million in 2024.
This rapid growth in specialty medicines is expanding the demand for direct-to-patient support programs. And those programs add pressure on operations to scale contact center capacity with skilled care professionals.
Key metrics
- Specialty pharma market projected by 2030 $129B → $965B
- GLP-1 patient access market by 2034 (CAGR 23%) $57B → $470B
- New U.S. jobs expected from GLP-1 demand: 250K → 500K
Specialty pharma: the administrative burden no one anticipated.
Specialty medications require prior authorization navigation, benefits verification, patient enrollment, co-pay assistance coordination, cold-chain logistics oversight, and ongoing therapy support. For GLP-1 drugs specifically, payers place a substantial documentation burden on manufacturers and their support ecosystems, and rejection rates can be high.
As a result, clinical teams take on administrative work they were never designed to do. Healthcare professionals spend hours on non-clinical inquiries such as prescription status checks, insurance verification, refill coordination, and enrollment troubleshooting. Every minute a clinician spends on an administrative task is a minute not spent on a patient.
This is not a failure of clinical operations. It’s a failure to scale the administrative and patient support infrastructure to match demand. The problem will grow as specialty drug volumes continue to rise.
Transforming patient support for integrated care.
Patient support programs are now a core operational requirement, as co-pay assistance programs give way to integrated "lifestyle support hubs.” Financial assistance, digital coaching, compliance tracking, and outcomes documentation are all part of the function. They require empathetic, trained, and compliance-aware people to sustain the vital connection among patients, payers, and providers.
How does the work of patient care get done? Traditionally, the answer was an internally staffed and managed operational model. Many organizations continue to depend on internal HR functions to staff patient support and contact center operations by posting roles, hiring, and training. This approach underestimates three realities:
- Demand is nonlinear. Therapy launches, medication shortage announcements, payer policy changes, and public health initiatives create volume spikes that a traditional headcount model cannot absorb.
- Attrition is high. Contact center roles in healthcare require a difficult combination of empathy, knowledge of compliance, and the ability to navigate complex insurance situations. Turnover is a persistent operational risk.
- Speed to competency matters. In a regulated environment, a new patient support agent who is not properly trained is not just unproductive — they’re a compliance liability.
Getting the model wrong creates inconsistent service, delays patient access, increases call abandon rates, and wastes clinical staff effort on administrative tasks. More importantly, it reduces patient trust.
With so much at stake, organizations are rethinking how they deliver the skilled care patients need — while minimizing risks to service quality and cost.
When patient volume outpaces capacity, a scalable contact center makes the difference.
As therapy pipelines expand and patient populations grow more complex, healthcare and pharmacy organizations are under increasing pressure to deliver consistent, high-quality patient support — without overburdening clinical staff or inflating costs. That’s why pharmaceutical and healthcare organizations increasingly turn to specialized workforce partners to solve the challenge of fluctuating, complex patient care demand.
A well-designed patient support contact center can serve as a direct extension of your clinical team, handling the administrative and communications demands that consume valuable time and resources. When built and staffed correctly, these centers address some of the most persistent challenges in patient care operations:
- Integrated operations: Patient support agents work seamlessly within existing workflows, functioning as an embedded part of the care team rather than an external vendor. This continuity protects the patient's experience and keeps clinical teams informed without adding to their workload.>
- Consistent, empathetic care: Agents trained specifically for healthcare environments can manage sensitive patient inquiries with the skill and compassion the moment requires — covering intake, enrollment, refill coordination, and insurance navigation with confidence and accuracy.
- Flexible staffing for unpredictable demand: Therapy launches, seasonal fluctuations, and sudden volume spikes are a reality in healthcare. A scalable staffing model means organizations can respond rapidly without the lag time or long-term cost commitments of traditional hiring.
- Built-in compliance and quality controls: Coaching and integrated reporting reduce compliance risk and maintain service quality standards, even during periods of high volume or rapid growth.
The results organizations typically see reflect the broader value of this approach: lower administrative burden on pharmacy and clinical staff, faster patient response times, reduced cost per patient contact compared to internal staffing models, and — perhaps most importantly — clinical staff who are freed to focus on what they do best.
In a landscape where patient expectations are rising and operational margins are tightening; a purpose-built patient support contact center isn't just an operational convenience. It's a strategic advantage.
An outsourced model brings agile, consistent operations.
Leveraging the right talent for a scalable, integrated patient care program demands a workforce model that aligns with a fundamental shift in infrastructure. That workforce model can be realized through an outsourced approach.
As a true business partner, the service provider understands the market for talent, scales quickly to changing demands, and skillfully navigates the nuances of managing contact center operations. Specialty drug access involves an understanding of many processes, including prior authorizations, payer navigation, HIPAA compliance, and disease state sensitivity to name a few. This complexity requires a workforce partner that understands both the contact center model and the life sciences operating environment.
Kelly has been recognized as one of the largest life sciences staffing firms in the U.S. by Staffing Industry Analysts, with custom contact center solutions ranging from supplemental staffing to fully outsourced patient support teams.
With the right partnership, organizations can meet the complex demands of patient care support, stand out as a trusted resource for patients, and be a leader in bringing their products to market.
