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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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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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

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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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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