Longitude Rx’s First External Partner: Arizona’s Onvida Health
Specialty pharmacy initiative Longitude Rx is extending its services beyond its five member health systems: Baylor Scott & White Health, Memorial Hermann Health System, Michigan Medicine, Novant Health, and Providence.
Enhancing specialty pharmacy capabilities is the first initiative for Longitude Health, an organization created to enhance core operational functions and transform health system performance. The goal is to improve patient access and adherence to specialty medications by providing solutions that support health systems in managing their specialty pharmacies.
Longitude Rx is partnering with Onvida Health on an integrated specialty pharmacy program in Yuma, Arizona. Onvida Health is a nonprofit hospital system with 430 inpatient beds, 45 outpatient clinics and a free-standing emergency department. Through this partnership, Onvida will implement Longitude Rx’s specialty pharmacy model to enhance care coordination for patients needing complex therapies, and introduce a new on-site retail pharmacy.
Longitude Rx said the new model will transition patients from a fragmented network of external specialty pharmacies to a coordinated, health system-led approach. By bringing specialty pharmacy services in-house, Onvida’s pharmacists and care teams can be actively involved throughout the full continuum of care—helping patients secure approvals, access financial assistance, and manage medications in close alignment with their physicians, the company added. This structure not only improves outcomes and adherence but also minimizes delays, confusion, and cost burdens associated with high-cost medications, Longitude Rx said.
“As a mission-driven community provider, we are committed to taking care of the whole patient, and that includes solving the challenges of fragmented specialty care,” said Jake Childs, PharmD, chief operating Officer of Onvida Health, in a statement. “We selected Longitude Rx because they are mission-aligned, health-system owned, and innovative in their approach compared to others we assessed. They bring the infrastructure and expertise to design and build the right pharmacy model for our community, while supporting our patients with clinical and financial oversight at every step.”
As part of the engagement, Onvida will gain access to Longitude Rx’s full suite of services, including tech-enabled solutions that optimize and coordinate workflows, medication access, embedded care teams, support hub operations for prior authorization and benefits investigation, and patient financial assistance programming.
“This partnership exemplifies why Longitude Rx exists: to deliver the right capabilities at the right time to health systems doing the hard work of caring for their communities,” said Jigar Thakkar, PharmD, M.B.A., CEO of Longitude Rx, in a statement. “We are not selling a one-size-fits-all solution. We are building a program with Onvida Health that reflects their mission and elevates patient care. And we’re doing it by sharing proven clinical, operational, and technology infrastructure developed across some of the most sophisticated health systems in the country.”
Thakkar joined Longitude Health from OU Health in Oklahoma, where he served as the chief administrative officer and chief pharmacy officer. He built a specialty pharmacy program for OU Health that notably grew to $470 million in less than four years.
Longitude Rx said it will embed clinical and operational experts alongside Onvida’s internal teams to stand up the program and align strategy with execution. This includes direct support for medication access, design of the in-house pharmacy infrastructure, and implementation of affordability programs that are often overlooked by traditional vendors. The partnership model ensures that Longitude Rx shares both the clinical responsibility and financial risk—aligning outcomes across both organizations.
This initiative is part of a broader investment in patient-centered, community-based care at Onvida. It will complement several major projects already underway, including the construction of a new hospital to serve South County residents and a multimillion-dollar investment in a local health careers center.
