Unlock the full potential of your infusion center by expanding beyond your specialty—offering diverse therapies to increase patient access, enhance community impact, and boost your practice’s efficiency and growth.
Why Practices Hesitate to Expand Beyond Their Specialty
For many practices providing infusion services, the idea of branching out into therapies outside their expertise can feel daunting. Common concerns include:
Fear of Responsibility
Practices often assume that offering infusion therapies for conditions outside their specialty means taking on the complete management of these patients. However, this isn’t the case. As the infusing provider, your role is to administer the therapy and monitor the patient during treatment safely. The referring specialist or primary care provider remains responsible for the patient’s overall care and disease management.
This collaboration allows your practice to focus on its infusion expertise without overextending resources.
Concern About Safety and Training
Many providers worry they don’t have the expertise to administer medications outside their specialty. But with proper training and resources, infusing new therapies can be just as safe and straightforward as the therapies you already provide. It is crucial to have a proper hypersensitivity reaction protocol in place, which is used to manage occurrences across all infusion therapies.
How Expanding Services Benefits Your Practice and Patients
Enhance Patient Access
By offering therapies for conditions outside your specialty, you make essential treatments more accessible—especially for patients in rural areas or those facing long travel times to hospital infusion centers or other providers. This expanded access can significantly improve outcomes and patient satisfaction.
Increase Practice Revenue
Adding more therapies diversifies your practice’s revenue streams, boosting your bottom line while utilizing your existing infrastructure and staff more efficiently. Diversifying your medication offerings also mitigates risk in the event one of your core therapies becomes unprofitable.
Support the Local Medical Community
By partnering with other specialists, you help reduce their workload while providing their patients with timely, quality care. This collaboration strengthens relationships and establishes your practice as a trusted partner in the healthcare community.
How to Expand Your Infusion Offerings Confidently
Leverage the Right Resources
- NICA Standards of Excellence for Ambulatory Infusion Centers: These guidelines ensure you’re meeting high standards of care as you expand.
- WeInfuse: Simplify scheduling, inventory management, documentation, and billing with specialized infusion software.
- RxToolKit: Manage medication preparation and dosing with precision.
Partner with Manufacturer Reps
Pharmaceutical manufacturers offer training and resources to ensure your team feels confident in administering new medications. These partnerships can provide valuable education, on-site support, training, and guidance for integrating new therapies into your practice.
Educate Your Team
Invest in training for your staff to ensure they are comfortable with the protocols and nuances of administering therapies outside your specialty. Consider hosting team meetings or workshops to share knowledge and build confidence.
Addressing Provider Concerns
Demonstrate Safety and Efficacy
Use data and case studies to show how infusing medications outside your specialty can be done safely and effectively. Share success stories from other practices that have successfully expanded their offerings.
Reinforce Role Division
Make it clear that your practice is not taking over patient care. Instead, you are collaborating with referring providers to ensure their patients receive timely and effective infusion therapy. This division of responsibility benefits everyone:
- The referring provider can focus on managing the patient’s condition.
- Your team focuses on providing safe, high-quality infusions.
- The patient gets the care they need without delay.
Conclusion: Growing with Purpose
Expanding your infusion practice beyond your specialty is more than just a business decision—it’s an opportunity to serve your community, increase access to life-changing therapies, and strengthen partnerships with local providers. With the right resources, training, and approach, you can confidently grow your practice while maintaining the same high standards of care.
Start today by reaching out to referring providers, exploring new therapies, and using tools from NICA, WeInfuse, and RxToolKit to support your journey. Together, we can transform the infusion landscape—one patient at a time.
About the Author
Ashley Knapp, co-founder of Local Infusion and NICA Advisory Committee member, brings over 13 years of industry experience and a deep commitment to improving infusion care. Her journey began in 2011 when she launched and managed a neurology infusion clinic, igniting her passion for enhancing patient access and advocating for those with chronic conditions. With expertise spanning clinical operations, business development, and leadership, Ashley has expanded access to vital infusion services across the Northeast, including roles at Intrafusion by McKesson and OI Infusion. An RN with two bachelor’s degrees and an MBA, Ashley blends hands-on healthcare experience with strategic acumen to drive systemic improvements in the infusion industry. Learn more at www.mylocalinfusion.com
About the National Infusion Center Association
NICA is dedicated to ensuring that the nation’s infusion centers remain a safe, more efficient, and more cost-effective alternative to hospital settings for consistent, high-quality care.
Infusion providers have a vested interest in the sustainability of the infusion delivery channel and its ability to serve vulnerable patient populations. NICA Provider Members have a voice and a seat at the table to inform NICA’s activities and the opportunity to remain highly engaged in the expansion and optimization of the infusion industry. Learn more about becoming a NICA member here: https://infusioncenter.org/join-nica/
Is your organization interested in becoming a featured subject matter expert on The Infusion Blog? Email [email protected] to inquire about opportunities for participation.
