My business partner, Randy McDonough has spent a lot of time traveling and speaking about MedSync at town hall meetings hosted by our affiliation (HealthMart). He continues to be surprised by how many pharmacies have not heard about, or have little interesting Medication Synchronization. We believe that there is a lot of value in this MedSync; our pharmacy has seen a significant impact since our program was implemented.
Just about a year ago, our pharmacy started really pushing a medication synchronization program. We went from a paper file based program to an electronic system. When we started our push, we had about 50 patients enrolled, and the program was labor intensive. One year later, the process is much more streamlined, and we how have over 400 patients enrolled. Our overall goal is to have about 30% of our active patients enrolled in the synchronization program. In one year, we are about half of the way to that goal. A secondary goal of our program is to enroll up to a third of our synchronization patients in our SuperSync program.
While we do charge for the enhanced packaging option included with SuperSync, there is no cost to our patients for our basic sync program. This is unusual for us; we make it a rule to charge for services our pharmacy offers. Our basic synchronization program is an exception to this rule. The reason is simple: while synchronization benefits the patient, by decreasing the complexity of managing their prescriptions and the number of trips they make to the pharmacy, it also has significant benefits for our pharmacy. The 15% of our patients enrolled to date were approached specifically because they represented more than 15% percent of our retail prescription volume. Our average sync-enrolled patient has more than 5 medications; many have significantly more.
The benefit for our pharmacy is primarily centered around our ability to anticipate our synced prescription workload. With our synchronization program, we can leverage our knowledge of the patients sync date to:
- postpone stocking expensive medications until just before they are needed, decreasing store inventory and improving cash flow,
- plan and distribute workload throughout the week, improving wait times for our non-sync patients.
- review patient medication utilization, and prepare targeted clinical interventions before the patient appears in the pharmacy.
The last benefit requires some explanation. Our clinical staff, while managing our synchronization schedule, also have used the opportunity to review the patients’ medications and utilization. Beyond reviewing maintenance mediations, our pharmacists are now also looking at other aspects of each patient, like immunization history, to identify patients that may need additional services. Specific interventions are printed and added to the will-call bag containing their medications to be picked up. This allows our pharmacists to talk to the patient when they come it, fill in these gaps in our clinical records, and offer additional services, like immunization, if indicated.
The benefits of our MedSync program and the associated changes in workflow efficiency is most visible on Saturday. Our pharmacy is only open for a few hours on Saturday mornings, with limited staff working this day. Historically, Saturday was a very difficult day for our pharmacists. The volume of prescriptions filled per hour was often equal to many week day mornings, but was being managed by a much smaller staff. Since implementing our synchronization program, this has changed significantly. The volume of prescriptions filled on a Saturday is how less than half of what it was before. This reduction is largely due to the redistribution of these prescriptions throughout the week.
One year into our program, we are seeing other benefits as well. Patients that have enrolled appreciate the convenience it provides. This helps cement our relationship with our patients, creating additional loyalty. While the number of visits our sync patients make to the pharmacy may actually decrease as a result of synchronization, the actual level of engagement with them has increased as a result. This additional engagement has helped us promote other paid services to our patients and thereby expand our revenue opportunities. The impact and opportunites afforded by our synchronization program are certainly broader than we first anticipated.
