Supporting Partners Across the Community
by Joe Pugliese, President and CEO

When we started the Hemophilia Alliance group purchasing organization in 2006, we made a promise to the bleeding disorders community. The promise was to give back to the community. The promise was of course dependent on our being successful. I think you would agree that the Alliance has been successful beyond the expectations of everyone, myself included.

The success has allowed us to live our mission: “The Hemophilia Alliance works to ensure member Hemophilia Treatment Centers have the expertise, resources and public support to sustain their integrated clinical and pharmacy services for individuals with bleeding and clotting disorders.”

We have just over the last two years reinvested about $4 million back into the community – through the Hemophilia Alliance Foundation and direct support to ATHN, National Hemophilia Foundation, the World Federation of Hemophilia, as well as development of DDAVP NS. We also supported the Partners program, as you can read about below.

Earlier this year we got a call from the Partners program in Indianapolis. Partners provides educational programs to health care providers in the bleeding disorders community. They have produced numerous live educational programs. many are available online and are free of charge. Some like the gene therapy modules offer continuing education credits. https://www.partnersprn.org.

They had been working on creating a Physicians Academy to reach hematologists early in their careers. They thought they had lined up funding for the program but had just found out the request had been denied. We immediately saw this as an opportunity. What better way to fulfill our mission then to fund a program designed to ensure HTCs have the expertise to care for the bleeding disorders community.

Chris Roberson provided this synopsis of the program:

“Last week, the IHTC and the Partners in Bleeding Disorders Education program launched the inaugural Partners Physician Academy. The Partners Physician Academy is the first and only US based intensive classical hematology training program for early career physicians in the US Hemophilia Treatment Center Network. The Academy was developed by many of the most respected leaders in the bleeding disorders community and was incredibly well-received by the fourteen, early-career physician participants. One participant’s reflections on the week included noting that, “Hearing how other centers optimize resources to provide the best care for our patient population was so helpful – and this is not something I could learn at any other conference or from a publication.” The Academy sought to address the training gap existing for most physicians upon completion of a hematology-oncology fellowship. Physicians are simply not adequately prepared to embark on a career at an HTC. The Academy also aimed to provide participants with an unparalleled opportunity to network with some of the key opinion leaders in the HTC network. The participants enjoyed a variety of engaging evening activities, including a visit to Newfields (Indianapolis Museum of Art) and Duckpin Bowling.

The Program left both the participants and faculty feeling energized and inspired. Dr. Steve Pipe, a Partners Physician Academy Advisory Board Member and Program Faculty remarked, “This Program has given me a renewed sense of excitement and hope for the future of hemophilia care. We have such an engaged group of young physicians and physician scientists, which is so important for the future success of the HTCs.”

The Partners Physician Academy was made possible with generous financial support from the Hemophilia Alliance and The Alliance Pharmacy. For more information, please visit https://www.partnersphysicianacademy.com.

We have to thank our members for believing we could make this happen and we have to thank our manufacturing partners for supporting our mission. The Alliance and The Alliance Pharmacy look forward to sponsoring next year’s program.