SUPPORTING PATIENTS EVERY STEP OF THE WAY: The United Therapeutics Cares Program

Oct 10, 2025

5 Min Read

“UT is known for having deeply passionate employees working hard to help patients, but we knew we could do more if we improved collaboration across internal functions and other external stakeholder groups that are important to improving the experience for patients....”

Tom Marinello

VP of Patient Relations

Tom Marinello

VP of Patient Relations

“Up to about 75 percent.”

That is the estimate a friend in the health profession shared with me when I asked: "how many patients don’t take medications as prescribed?”

There is a broad range of estimates about what is called “non-adherence” to doctor-prescribed therapies. Whatever the correct figure, the medical industry agrees — non-adherence is a widespread challenge that can negatively impact patient outcomes.

There are many causes for non-adherence. Examples include patient forgetfulness, complex therapies, inadequate patient-provider communication, costs, side-effects from the therapies, other socioeconomic barriers such as caregiver support or logistical challenges, or patient fear and anxiety related to these or other issues.

The goal to enhance adherence among patients who are prescribed with therapies developed by United Therapeutics (UT) was one of the chief motivating factors behind our decision to reorganize our patient support work under the United Therapeutics Cares umbrella in September 2024.

United Therapeutics was founded in 1996 by parents trying to save the life of their child who had been diagnosed with a rare and terminal disease called pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). At the time, there were limited therapies, and the only
known cure — then and now — is a lung transplant.

Today, with a focus on rare lung diseases, most of our FDA-approved therapies are focused on PAH and pulmonary hypertension with interstitial lung disease (PH-ILD).

Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a type of high blood pressure that affects the arteries in the lungs and the right side of the heart. PAH is one form of PH in which elevated pressure in the pulmonary arteries strains the right side of the heart as it pumps blood to the lungs. PH-ILD results from a combination of high blood pressure in the lungs and one or more of a group of progressive lung disorders that cause lung tissue to stiffen, making it harder to breath.

These diseases can be difficult to diagnose. By the time many patients are prescribed therapies, their diseases may have advanced considerably, underscoring the importance of fast access and maintaining diligence around therapies. Therapies to treat PAH and PH-ILD are specialty medications that bring with them unique complexities requiring in-depth patient education to enable safe and effective administration. For example, some medications require specialty devices that may require cleaning between uses; others require the patient to dilute doses before administration.

The Catalyst

We launched an ambitious initiative in 2024 to rethink how we support the patient journey from the ground up through the lens of a patient starting and continuing one of our therapies. “We saw the data and looked at why people don’t stay on therapy, and it’s often because starting and staying on therapy is complex,” Tom Marinello, VP of Patient Relations explained. “So, we mapped that journey and found many opportunities to have a positive impact on each patient’s experience.”

Tom and his team discovered that many of our patients shared the following experience:

Patients aren’t always in the headspace to be able to absorb all the information provided in their healthcare provider’s (HCP’s) office or by their specialty pharmacy (SP), so they go home and wait for someone to contact them about their therapies, sometimes for several weeks;
In that wait period, some patients become concerned about costs, apathetic towards treatment, discouraged by the process of starting therapy, forget elements of the therapy education their provider gave them, or any combination of the above and decide never to start treatment; and
Others, when they start, might discontinue because their expectations were not clear or they did not have an adequate social support system to assist them through their treatment journey

UT is known for having deeply passionate employees working hard to help patients, but we knew we could do more if we improved collaboration across internal functions and other external stakeholder groups that are important to improving the experience for patients – including HCPs, insurance companies, SPs, and caregivers.” Tom said.

United Therapeutics Cares trainees

HOW IT WORKS

Bringing together many of the preexisting UT support teams along with several new teams and capabilities, our United Therapeutics Cares program integrates best-in-class patient support programs by providing ongoing, one-on-one education and support for patients with PAH or PH-ILD who have been prescribed a UT medication consistent with our approved medication labels.

For example, upon enrollment into the United Therapeutics Cares program, which is voluntary, a Patient Navigator is paired with the patient from the time the initial prescription is written all the way through their therapy shipment, initiation, training, and beyond. The Patient Navigator seeks to build a relationship with the patient—and their caregivers when present—to understand their specific needs, and then tailor an engagement and education plan specific to them. Patient Navigators are the face of the United Therapeutics Cares program to patients and caregivers, with a fully integrated team working in partnership to help support, clarify, and streamline the patient treatment journey.

These include: Access and Affordability Specialists who review patient insurance plans and assist with coverage options like copay and financial assistance programs for eligible patients; Therapy Access Managers who work directly with HCPs to educate on access requirements specific to the patient’s insurance plan; and Nursing Teams that educate prescribers, their staff, and SPs on how to use our products and equip them to better serve patients on our therapies.

“As we spoke to patients and prescribers throughout the development of the program, the need and desire for UT to launch a program like United Therapeutics Cares became very clear. Once we launched, the proof was in the numbers. In the first three months after launching United Therapeutics Cares, about half of all patients prescribed with our Tyvaso^® therapy elected to sign up with the program. That number has since climbed to over 70 percent of all newly prescribed patients,” Tom explained.

Tom and his colleagues have their eyes on UT’s ambition to produce an unlimited supply of tolerable transplantable organs for all who need them. “We look forward to being able to support a patient from diagnosis to therapy, and for those who need it, the cure of an organ transplant,” he explained.

70%

The number of newly prescribed Tyvaso patients who signed up with the United Therapeutics Cares program within its inaugural year.

CREATING BRIGHTER FUTURES AND ICE CREAM

We are some years away from that vision, so what keeps Tom and his team motivated today?

“If you told me I’d be doing this work 20+ years ago, I I probably would’ve laughed. At that time, my world was medical research, and I was sure it always would be,” Tom shared. “Early on, I went into patient and operational analytics. Analyzing patient data helped me see things I hadn’t thought about before, about how patient outcomes are not just about the therapies, but about everything that helps a patient get to their diagnosis, how they identify and maintain a support system, how access to therapy is achieved, and then, how they integrate their day-to-day or week-to-week treatment into their lives. At UT, our patient populations are small because their diseases are rare, so we get to see the benefits of our work on a case-by-case basis. It’s incredibly meaningful for me and the entire team,” Tom said.

Our patients seem to feel the same. “One patient sent me a thank you note addressed to the entire team on the backside of a coupon to her favorite local ice cream shop, inviting me to visit if I am ever in town! Moments like that really bring into focus why we do what we do, and why the entire team continues to go above and beyond. Behind each number, each activity, each process, there is a very real person who is counting on us,” Tom shared. “I’ll get the ice cream next time in town, but that note on the back of a coupon stays with me.”

United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs)

Our United Therapeutics Cares program aligns with multiple goals, but especially UN SDG 3.

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UT converted to a public benefit corporation (PBC) in 2021—the first publicly-traded biopharmaceutical company to do so. Our PBC purpose has two parts: to create a brighter future for patients through the development of novel pharmaceutical therapies and technologies that expand the availability of transplantable organs. Our first purpose helps delay or avoid the need for a transplant, while the second purpose seeks to enable a patient to have a transplant when they need one. We align our PBC purpose with three pillars—our patients, our people, and our planet.

For more about United Therapeutics Cares, see: https://unitedtherapeuticscares.com/

United Therapeutics Cares is part of our overall approach to patient-centricity. Find out more about UT’s patient-centricity model here: https://corporateresponsibility.unither.com/~/media/Files/U/Unither-
Corp/reports-and-resources/ut-patient-centricity-overview.pdf