2509, 2023

Maximizing Prescription Revenue

Capturing Discharge Prescriptions – WAR Hospital systems are forfeiting significant revenue during a critical period that demands financial strength and strategic defenses against rising retail competition. The underlying causes remain uncertain, though Illustration 1 outlines some potential factors contributing to the underperformance of hospital outpatient pharmacies. It is possible that key decision-makers, including hospital CEOs, CFOs, and Board Members, are operating on flawed information. One of the leading reasons outpatient

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3101, 2023

What to Expect in Transforming the Pharmacy

Download PDF The transformation path is vastly different than that often associated with traditional consulting. Whereas the latter focuses on ‘fixing’ something that should work, the former ‘changes’ something that does not. The big healthcare consulting firms focus on ‘fixing’. Therefore, expect to drive your own transformation. As drug chain stores continue to expand their presence in the healthcare industry, hospital management must recognize a strategic imperative to expand their

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3101, 2023

What Hospital CEOs Should Ask Pharmacy Leadership

Download PDF Pharmacy leadership no longer has the luxury of operating as a service cost center. CEOs must expect the leadership team to recognize their strategic role in defending the hospital from non-healthcare competition. As Dr. Joseph Cacchione turns around the fortunes of his hospitals by addressing problems caused by riding the tide of acquisitions inside the organization, he and other CEO’s must also address new challenges from outside the

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2812, 2022

Does the Future Retail State Include Pharmacists?

Download PDF The future state for retail pharmacy does not include pharmacists unless retailers can find someone willing to subsidize them. The fact is the number of days for retail pharmacists as we know them may be growing shorter. Retail pharmacist management have long denied front-line pharmacists healthcare value by harvesting Rph-Patient time for profit. Now they are at a crossroad. Overview There would be no need to ‘free up’

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2004, 2022

Hospitals Beware the Wolf – Will Retail Pay the Bill for Care Inequity and Deprivation?

Download PDF I have been talking about health care commoditization to clients for a while. Wide-eyed awareness in Pennsylvania got lost somewhere between the folks in the meeting and the C-Suite. Instead of forging a new future for the hospital, the client opted for a finger in the proverbial dike. “No one ever made a nickel on pharmacist counseling” ranted a doctor on a board of directors in New Mexico.

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1603, 2022

Pharmacy Management Partner (PMP)

Pharmacy Management Partner – Buyer Beware … Choose Wisely Download PDF    I have had only one experience reviewing the operation of a large pharmacy management partner (PMP) other than a drug chain. A client asked for the review after having been frustrated by aspects of the operation. Wait times were so bad it drove up the value of wait number tickets for which a robust market existed. I recently read

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2102, 2022

The Future: A Hard Sell

“Why should I believe Sabrina Hannigan?” a hospital VP of Pharmacy asked at our introduction. True, outpatient pharmacy staffing is different from retail.  But, then again, he was employing a retail pharmacy model I was familiar with. “We are not a retail pharmacy” another hospital VP of Pharmacy cautioned me at our introduction.  My thought was “Then why are you operating as one?”  I assured him that I would not

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1205, 2021

Readmission Reduction … Fact or Fiction Marketing

There is a difference between stated fact and business sense.  In the case of hospital readmission, the facts can be viewed to suggest that readmission penalty policy has improved performance.  Business sense would tell us otherwise.  Yes, in a perfect world they might work, but not this world.  For this reason, appealing to a client’s perceived need to reduce readmission may not be as persuasive as appealing to their need

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1205, 2021

Overworked, Understaffed Pharmacy

Investigative journalists once again have raised the specter of looming fatal pharmacy errors. The NBC News Investigative Unit cherry-picked this perennial favorite and published its findings on-line in an article on March 16, 2021[2]. While the words and source of quotes change, the message is the same. So too will be the outcome. To be sure one can always find a disgruntled employee who feels overworked, underappreciated, and underpaid. The

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0912, 2020

Prescription Tax and Layout

The euphemism ‘wait time’ hides a truth that retail pharmacies avoid otherwise necessary investment in patients by charging a patient prescription tax.  This tax transfers the burden of ‘time to do it right’ to the patient in the form of reduced benefits and delivery delays.  The significance of this tax is made evident when comparing retail and outpatient pharmacy requirements for layout, process, and technology.                 Open PDF Overview Despite

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