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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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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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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2210, 2020

Central Fill or No?

  “… we’re operating on the assumption that central (fill) is a less-expensive way to fill prescriptions.  But we haven’t found the exact right measure of this yet.”    Director of Pharmacy Operations Overview Hospital patient markets require on-demand delivery and resist delays to departure from the hospital. Central fill is an on-demand fill system requiring patients to delay delivery or pre-order prescriptions. Removing production delays help reduce order-to-counter delivery time.

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2010, 2020

January 2020 Cost to Dispense Study: Tale of Two Stories

  The results of a sponsored study on prescription dispensing cost dressed the emperor in new clothes for all to see what he would have you see. Overview An industry sponsored Study sets $12.40 as the cost to dispense each prescription, with direct store labor accounting for 58% of this amount. Results suggest an average prescription takes 14 minutes to fulfill giving a completion rate of just 4 prescriptions per

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2804, 2020

The Enemy is Us

Illinois Collaborative Pharmaceutical Task Force Postmortem Dissection Recent Illinois pharmacy regulations, or lack thereof, precipitating from a 2016 Chicago Tribune investigation might best illustrate how retail dominance can bias development of pharmacy regulation and preserve drug chain competitive advantage. The investigation found significant counseling issues in 52% of chain drug pharmacies. In response, legislators recommended changes aimed at eliminating, or at least reducing, this clear risk to the public. The

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2804, 2020

Staff Turnover

Staff turnover has several possible causes:  you, the staff, or more likely … the wrong process.  This is especially true when asking staff to achieve goals without the right tools.   In the face of what I believe to be compelling truths and urgency, how is it possible that hospitals are not inspired to transforming outpatient pharmacy operations? Staff turnover is one consequence of failing to match performance expectation with

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