Day-by-day - what NPP coordinators actually do

What the process actually looks like

A Named Patient Program request moves through five practical stages: intake, feasibility, documentation, sourcing, and delivery. Each stage has a clear input, a clear output, and a set of failure modes that delay the cycle if unaddressed. Understanding the stages, what happens, what can go wrong, and what a clean hand-off looks like, is the single most useful thing a patient or physician can do up front.

Intake and feasibility

Intake collects the minimum information needed to assess feasibility: drug name and strength, indication, destination country, treating physician, and a one-line clinical summary. Feasibility is a short assessment, usually returned within one business day, that answers three questions: Is the destination-country pathway open for this drug and indication? Is the clinical picture appropriate for a named-patient request? Can sourcing and logistics be coordinated within a timeline that is clinically acceptable? If any answer is no, we say so plainly.

Documentation

Documentation is where most cycles stall. The required set usually includes: prescription, clinical justification, patient consent, patient ID, hospital letterhead, and destination-country-specific forms (ethics opinion, pharmacovigilance commitment, distributor attestation). We provide templates and examples for every document that we can provide templates for, and we flag destination-specific requirements on the country pages. We do not file on the physician’s behalf.

Sourcing and logistics

Once the documentation is complete, sourcing is triggered: acquisition from a US-licensed pharmaceutical wholesale partner, supply through a US-licensed pharmaceutical wholesale partner, packaging under qualified cold-chain, and international shipment with a continuous-read temperature logger and a specialty-logistics carrier. We give you a written timeline estimate for your case before you commit.

Delivery and receipt

Delivery is to the treating physician or hospital pharmacy, not direct-to-patient for specialty-cold-chain product. On receipt, the logger data is verified, the DSCSA documentation is signed, and the product is placed in qualified storage. Any excursion triggers quarantine and a replacement cycle under our quality SOPs.

What “good” timeline looks like

We give you a written timeline estimate for your case before you commit. Repeat cycles for maintenance therapies are materially faster because documentation is reusable.

Further reading

See Realistic NPP timelines and our pathway explainers for destination-specific process maps.

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