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Practice Management

Offering services such as point-of-care testing and bundled products marketed as recovery kits can increase customer loyalty.

Differentiate Your Pharmacy With Unique Product, Service Offerings

Michael Ganio, PharmD, MS, senior director of pharmacy practice and quality
at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP), sat down with Drug Topics to discuss the current drug shortages and how pharmacists are dealing with them.

Video: Majority of Pharmacists Say They Are Being Impacted by Drug Shortages

Slideshow: Trends in Mobile Technology for the Pharmacy Front-End

The world continues to become more automated, but how much responsibility should you give AI within your pharmacy?

How Much Power Should You Give Automation in the Front-End of Your Pharmacy?

Artificial intelligence can be a key tool for streamlining pharmacy workflows.

AI Streamlines Pharmacy Workflow

 Hi, my name is Jay Dombi. I'm the Vice President of Services & Solutions at AmerisourceBergen. I work to better connect our suppliers and our customers through strategy, analytics, operations, and marketing, so that we can bring the best solutions forward for all parties.

 Hi, I'm Lamont Robinson. I'm the Director of Supplier Diversity for AmerisourceBergen. When you talk about supplier diversity, what it is, it’s a program that allows us to support and do business with companies owned by women, minorities, veterans, LGBTQ, and disabled individuals.

 What are the biggest challenges for nurturing diverse suppliers?

 For us, the biggest challenge in nurturing diverse suppliers is really finding them first off. So, we invested in a tool last year that would allow us to be able to source for diverse suppliers. A lot of these diverse businesses, even if they're not small, we have to provide some development because they have to be prepared to do business with us, as well as others on a higher scale. So, for me, the hardest part is trying to get out there, get into the communities, discover who they are, convince them of doing business and partnering with us, and developing them so that they can be successful.

 Why is it important to provide customers with diverse supplier options?

 So, I grew up on the west side of Chicago, I always love to tell that story. Because when you grow up in an underserved community, the independent pharmacies are the ones that you typically go to the by your products and also to congregate. For me, this is not only an opportunity from an AmerisourceBergen perspective, but it's also a mission to be able to help underserved communities to get the products that they need, to get products that would require them to go outside of the neighborhood. If we can keep it in the neighborhood for a lot of these underserved communities, it's an economic revitalization for these neighborhoods. So again, for me, I look at it as a challenge, because it's something that's new, that's different, that's innovative, but at the same time, it's an impact on those communities.

 Can you give an overview of the AmerisourceBergen Marketplace?

 At the core of it, the goal of the AmerisourceBergen Marketplace is to offer a trusted location for ease of access, to multiple suppliers for our independent pharmacies. Full stop. Beyond that, we know that these customers buy a lot of products that AmerisourceBergen doesn't stock or sell through our warehouses, right? Some are bulky. Some are candy that melts. Canes take up a lot of space, whatever it might be. How can we service these customers more effectively, so that they aren't managing 15 or 20 different suppliers? So, they're not managing reams and reams of purchase orders or various credit card receipts? How do we bring all that together into a very easy solution for them that we can continue to transact with them and build a deeper, stronger relationship?

 What kind of value does AmerisourceBergen Marketplace provide to independent pharmacies and the communities they serve?

 One of the key items here is convenience. Again, we know a lot of these customers buy many of these things. They're managing multiple, multiple suppliers, multiple invoices, multiple purchase orders. With our ability to funnel that through our e-commerce platform, we're able to give them a single-point solution to do that. Working with us, someone who they've worked with for a long time, we're vetting these other suppliers before they come in. The customers can trust that they're going to get the product they asked for and they're going to get the price that they need. Then they can quickly and rapidly service whatever their customers’ needs really are. It starts with convenience and the efficiency associated with that and then listening to the customer to determine what else can we bring in. Do you need new features on the website itself? What other products might interest you? And then continuing to build it from there.

 How does the Marketplace support and elevate the company’s commitment to supplier diversity?

 A lot of supplier diversity programs really revolve around buying products and services from diverse businesses. But for me, supplier diversity is more than just that. It's really about revenue generation. It's about establishing an infrastructure that supports diverse businesses. It’s also about education and development of those diverse businesses. AmerisourceBergen Marketplace gives us an opportunity to create a platform that provides all those elements. It allows us to be able to help our customers generate revenues for their stores, because it provides products that are needed by the underserved communities. It's about infrastructure, in terms of helping to build a culture that better supports diverse businesses. It's about finding ways for the customer to be able to purchase products that they normally would not be able to purchase in their community. Then ultimately, the development and utilizing our ability as a corporate citizen to help these businesses grow. That's important for us to be able to have a successful and world class supplier diversity program.

 Can you talk about the experience of launching the Marketplace program?

: Our pilot program has been going on for a little over a year. And for us, it's really been a great listening and learning experience. We’re getting into a new environment here. Our current platform is called ABC Order. Because it was set up as an ordering platform, a pharmacist went in, knew they needed albuterol, typed in albuterol, and bought it. Now, we need to create a browsing and shopping experience for them. So, we really spent a lot of time through this pilot, listening and learning what new features we need. We need better searchability. We need better categorization. We need the ability to shop on a page because these pharmacists now expect a more consumer-like experience in terms of shopping versus coming in to just buy something. We've had over 200 pilot participants. We've been really close with and been thankful for all the feedback they've given us. Trust me, they haven't held back. That's what we need to hear, we need to hear ‘you need to do this better, focus here'. So, we've been able to take that feedback and continue working with our IT partners, working with our supplier partners, to really try and build that to a world class offering.

 Is there one key takeaway from the pilot phase?

 I'd say one of the key takeaways is continuing to evolve. This is not going to end up being a static solution. The solution will not end up being ‘one size fits all’. We need to continue to listen and learn. Our customers are in different parts of the country, serving different communities, with different types of needs. I'll give one example. We're working now with one of our suppliers who is a supplier of diverse and ethnic haircare products. We've linked them together with a group of our pharmacies that are inner city and want to have better access to those products. We've now partnered together with that supplier and those pharmacies to create a number of marketing programs, so that they can better target and service that community, as well as get access to marketing materials, planograms, upcoming products that are going to be new to market, so that each of those individual customers can better work exactly with their patients and fulfilling their needs.

 What are the short- and long-term goals for the program?

 From a short-term goal standpoint, it's taking the feedback we've heard from our customers and actioning that. We need to enhance our platform. We need to bring in more products. We need to bring in more suppliers. We need to create a more customer-centric shopping experience for them. So that we can expand our program from the 200 stores now to 5000, 7000, all of our customers across all of AmerisourceBergen and continuing to set up those mechanisms to listen and learn. From a long-term goals perspective, once we've set up those mechanisms, we have the environment and we can continue to listen and learn. It's about personalization and making sure that we move from a ‘one size fits all’ approach, to be able to work with each of those various communities to get the solution that works best for them so they can get access to the diverse suppliers for the specific supplies that they need to service their unique communities. Our independent pharmacies range from rural Montana to inner city New York or Philadelphia. And those two examples right there? They have very unique needs. We need to make sure that we can service their needs and that they can go into our platform and get access to exactly what they need, exactly when they need it, to serve their diverse commercial customer base.

 What is the key to creating a successful supplier diversity program?

 The key to creating a successful, world class supplier diversity program for me is more about understanding who the customers are, understanding what their needs are, and really building a supplier diversity program around those needs. And when I mentioned customers, it's not just external customers. It's also internal as well. Looking at and understanding the team members, looking at the various groups internally within the organization and how they could use supplier diversity to further their efforts, that's important to me. Having this platform gives us a chance to be able to create something that's not only innovative, but also something that allows us to be able to increase the awareness of supplier diversity internally. When that happens, you have a whole entire organization that supports the supplier diversity needs. When you try to convince the diverse suppliers, who are for profit and they understand that we're a top 10 company, in terms of revenues in the country, even if they've never heard us before, they know that there's an opportunity. With me being in supplier diversity, that my role is to support businesses that are like them, they get excited. I've always been into innovation. For me, it's always a matter of trying to find ways that we can partner together to do something that's different and impactful. You get a lot of diverse suppliers that get excited about that. Once we get connected, we let them know what our mission is, and we give them an opportunity to prove to us that they are who they say they are. Beautiful things happen because we all get a chance to get in there and be more innovative, more impactful in terms of the approach that we have with the businesses.

 In what other ways is AB working to advance supplier diversity?

To ensure our supplier diversity goals are met, one of the things that we did is establish a Supplier Diversity Council in 2021. That council allows us to be able to look at supplier diversity from different perspectives. It consists of roughly 30 members and leaders within the organization. The beautiful thing about that is that we have 4 workstreams coming from that council and those 4 workstreams have given us the chance to look at innovations that integrate supplier diversity into 4 main elements: revenue generation, infrastructure, building in, and education and development. The more that we go out and establish programs and initiatives such as this with AmerisourceBergen Marketplace, the more that it allows supplier diversity to be viewed as an innovative center within a company.

 How does supplier diversity contribute to creating a more resilient pharmacy supply chain?

 There used to be a stigma that was associated with diverse businesses bringing in added costs, but that stigma does not exist today. What I've seen in the 18 years that I've been in supplier diversity is actually supply chain cost reduction through supplier diversity because you have more diverse businesses that are able to be viable competitors against their larger counterparts. Then again, you give more options and selections to the customer. For me, you're strengthening your supply chain by having a supplier diversity program and focusing on diverse businesses because you give yourself a chance to be able to buy more products and services that are different than what you've traditionally purchased. It gives you the ability to develop these businesses so that they can become better solutions and provide other products.

 I want to again thank our independent pharmacy participants who've been so great in helping us understand their needs and shape this experience as well as our various suppliers. We've had a lot of great outreach from a variety of suppliers. The one example of this diverse ethnic haircare supplier working lean to partner with us to work more closely with this group of inner-city pharmacies. I think it's just an early example of the types of partnerships and the type of connections we can grow through working with our partners, internally at AB that drives supplier diversity, as well as our external supplier and customer base

For an independent pharmacy to be able to support the AmerisourceBergen Marketplace, it gives them a chance to be able to help their communities in different ways, which ultimately will lead to job creation. The more jobs that are in those underserved communities, the more customers that you can have coming in and out of your door.

 to learn more about the AmerisourceBergen Marketplace. To learn more about AmerisourceBergen’s Supplier Diversity team – a key partner in the development of the new solution, 

Videos

Jay Dombi and Lamont Robinson share how the AmerisourceBergen Marketplace can help pharmacies and why having diverse suppliers is important.

Total Pharmacy

Total Pharmacy Interviews

Expanding and Diversifying the Supply Chain

[00:07] Drug Topics®:I think it’s fair to say that COVID-19 really changed the game in community pharmacy. Could you talk about how has it changed the landscape? 

 Before COVID-19 hit, we as community pharmacists were moving toward expanding our scope of practice in many ways. Most states allowed us to prescribe or provide certain treatments based on protocols, which varied by state. For example, in Oregon, we were empowered to offer tobacco-cessation patient assessment and prescribing, birth control prescribing services, and others. COVID-19 changed everything globally, especially for us here in the United States. 

The pandemic required a number of time-sensitive, health-driven initiatives to run nationally but with a coordinated focus at the local level. Luckily, we as community pharmacists are built for such a challenge. Direct patient care by pharmacists is critical, especially during a public health emergency. The US government recognized this and quickly engaged community pharmacies to provide testing and administer vaccines. Without the leveraging of community pharmacies as access points for care in a timely and accessible manner, many Americans would not have been vaccinated or had easy access to COVID testing.

Also in August 2021, the government allowed us to administer monoclonal antibody (mAB) therapies in the treatment of COVID-19. This was game-changing in elevating the community pharmacy to a place for timely and important treatment, as well as a place for testing andimmunization. Pharmacies are no longer just a place to have medications dispensed. Now, we are practicing at the top of our licenses with treatment as an expansion of scope, and Prescryptive has been there throughout the journey to support us.

Prescryptive built ACPE (Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education)-accredited CE to support our assessing of patients and administering mAB. Prescryptive built scheduling, payment, and reporting mechanisms, and the company continues to develop additional services to support pharmacists as we are asked to expand our clinical provisions to patients. 

 Community pharmacists would probably agree that COVID-19 has led to challenges. Butdo you see opportunities, as well? 

 In this pandemic, we have seen that the biggest challenges with COVID-19 have also brought about tremendous opportunity. With COVID testing and immunizations, we as pharmacists, entered the most complex environment for scheduling and reporting ever seen in modern times. But more people are now seeing how absolutely powerful and necessary a pharmacist practicing at the top of their license is to local and national health. The more we as pharmacists test and treat, the more opportunities will come for additional scope expansion. 

 How can technology help capture these opportunities? 

Quite simply, pharmacists need a technology system to succeed. There are two reasons: First, the volume of services now being booked, as well as the requisite scheduling and reporting, are too much to do “by hand,” with a clipboard and paper system. It’s time to let go of that patched-together method!

Second, technology streamlines processes, allowing you to focus on patient care. The right system will make the complicated processes of pharmacy work seamless so that you can see more patients and enable you to focus on what matters: the care of your patients. Being more efficient, gathering patient information, managing payments, and enabling easy and customizable scheduling options are crucial to success. 

 Technology can help community pharmacists work at “top of license.” Was that a consideration for your team when you built Prescryptive’s MyRx PRO, a comprehensive pharmacy management platform? 

 After years working as pharmacists, our team at Prescryptive has focused on 1 thing: making a comprehensive system that works for pharmacists practicing today. MyRx PRO is an electronic, comprehensive support system that was built for pharmacists by pharmacists. 

This platform helps pharmacists launch new clinical services, connect with new patients who discover the pharmacy from Prescryptive’s mobile experience and marketing campaigns, and optimize the pharmacy workflow. MyRx PRO saves you time by streamlining patient information collection, scheduling, workflow optimization, reporting, and billing processes.

You can offer clinical services, including critical COVID-19 care, and Prescryptive provides a simple mobile experience for your patients that allows them to book services at your pharmacy and find prescription savings as well as public health reporting and billing support for you. MyRx is a secure and seamless system built on blockchain technology, and it enables more quality time for testing, treatment, and communication between you and your patients. 

How can your technology affect the issues that pharmacists have seen arise from savings cards, which can cut into profits? 

 Another feature on MyRx PRO is SmartPRICE, a pharmacist-first pricing solution. SmartPRICE is a cash card with an intelligent pricing engine. Unlike other cards, SmartPRICE has low, transparent admin fees, which means more profit to pharmacies and competitive pricing for patients – as much as 80% savings on prescription drugs. Pharmacies benefit from robust, AI-driven pricing.

Our data scientists work with pharmacies to analyze claims data and customize pricing based on your store’s business objectives, competition, type of drug, and other factors. This allows you to offer your customers savings in a planned configuration that works for you.

 What about patient engagement? Patients will demand solutions that work for them. How does MyRx PRO incorporate the patient experience? 

 MyRx includes MyRx.io, the patient-friendly mobile experience, which connects you and the patient: With a few simple steps, patients can search for a clinical service, find a pharmacy near them that’s offering the service, and schedule an appointment.

Before they arrive for their appointment, patients can fill out a questionnaire to provide the necessary information for the visit and pay for the service. We call MyRx.io the pharmacy on your phone.Patients are empowered to do more at each pharmacy visit, including access clinical services, save on prescriptions, and maintain an updated list of medications. 

 Have you seen community pharmacists being successful with the MyRx PRO solution? 

 Our work in New York, Florida, Oregon, and other states has been to establish a network of community pharmacies as testing sites, so they can serve their communities in this critical way during the pandemic.

We’re supporting community pharmacists through the process of standing up monoclonal antibody treatments, which is enormously impactful in providing lifesaving patient care and in expanding the profitability of these pharmacies.

Prescryptive also has a continuing education program delivered in an online format, at no charge, to all pharmacy practitioners nationwide, on monoclonal antibody administration to prepare pharmacists for the administration of this treatment.Similarly, we have worked closely with CPESN in Florida and New York on testing and vaccine availability and scheduling. We are also working with Washington state, Georgia, and several others; we are growing our network of pharmacies providing clinical services and testing everywhere! 

 What does the future hold for community pharmacists in the short term? 

 We can expect COVID-19 to be with us for a while, especially in the form of testing and boosters. We as pharmacists should have a COVID-19 plan that includes PPE and how to keep them ordered and stocked, a plan for complex scheduling and reporting, and a plan for continuing education to assure that their entire staff is prepared to provide care to patients in these new ways.

There also needs to be a continued conversation about how community pharmacists have helped care for patients during the pandemic, and where we can keep growing to extend our services. 

 Looking forward, could you share your view on the role of community pharmacy in the future?

 I want to close by underscoring the important bond between community pharmacists and patients. People in the US rank pharmacists as one of their most trusted healthcare providers. For the majority ofus, this trust and our relationship with patients are what make our jobs fulfilling.

Patients trust us with their medications and their care, and we must continue to build on that trust, and think about ways we can help patients, serve communities, and impact public health-driven endeavors, through testing and treatment. COVID-19 blew open the door to scope expansion, and now we all need to walk through it, with technology helping us work at the top of our licenses so we can keep building trust with patients, with public health, with payers, and with partners in our community. Prescryptive is a champion of the community pharmacist and is excited to work together to build a stronger future for pharmacy. 

Product Spotlight

Technology Solutions Aid Scope of Practice Expansions for Community Pharmacists

Merril Gilbert, founder and CEO of TraceTrust, discusses how pharmacists can learn more about cannabis-infused edibles during the Natural Products Expo East in Baltimore, MD.

Merril Gilbert, founder and CEO of TraceTrust: 

I think it would help all of us if they would learn more. That they would really start to attend different events, not just like where we are here, but specific cannabis [associations]. The National Cannabis Association, the NCIA, has wonderful, educational events. Get involved, learn more, use your expertise to help us to tell a story, and really start to learn and understand it better. And don’t be afraid of it because it’s still not “legal.” If you don’t live in a state that has a form of legal cannabis, when you are in one–definitely go talk to a vendor, see where things are going, read about it.

How Pharmacists Can Learn More

Merril Gilbert, founder and CEO of TraceTrust, discusses variations in cannabis product potency and type during the Natural Products Expo East in Baltimore, MD.

People coming from food and beverage, they know how to make these products and understand that when we run the standard, we look at three categories of ingestible. Number 1 is anything that’s made into a batch, so beverages fall into that capsules, candy bars that are poured into a form and it’s easily identified as each square equal x. That’s all a very controlled batch formula, but the next category is your snacks and your coded popcorns and your coated chocolate gummies, etc. How that stuff gets medicated and infused is going to vary because of that, and so you have to get really careful on: “Wow, that’s delicious,” but not eating the whole bag if the whole bag is 100 milligrams of THC or CBD. You have to be very careful. And then the last group that we look at is baked goods because when you do have dry/wet ingredients and you add heat, you have a very different reaction area to it. And remember that for the THC and CBD to be activated, it needs heat. So, it has to be very carefully figured out and processed in the right methodologies for whatever you’re trying to create.

Variations in Cannabis Product Potency and Types

One is getting it declassified as a Schedule I narcotic. It’s clearly not that. There is no addictive qualities: it’s a combination of other things. But it’s also, again, how do I counteract it and not knowing how it’s going to react for different people. You’re going to have the same reaction as if you have a peanut allergy and we have to be really conscious of that. So, again, creating a standard like we’re doing in this same manner and together with other types of certifications –nonGMO and vegan– and really aligning together, raising up together and not competing against each other is crucial now.

Regulatory Hurdles for Increased Availability of Cannabis-Infused Edibles

Merril Gilbert, founder and CEO of TraceTrust, explains how pharmacists can expand the conversation on cannabis-infused products during the Natural Products Expo East in Baltimore, MD.

I really think that this is a high-level answer about verifiable supply chain, products that are recognized in the marketplace, not just somebody off the street or from the gas station. Ideally something that is coming out of Canada or the United States where there is a rigorous testing on the plant side. But it would be great to have the pharmacists and have the conversation with them in a group­–and particularly in different regions from the United States–to see what their patients are out there asking for. What are the questions that they have that they are trying to, because–again– it’s pretty unknown. So, we’re just at the crux of having research. UCLA, USC are doing some things. Israel is going to be coming out with so much, but we don’t know. Is it a male-female, how your metabolism, what happens if I eat, what happens if I’m following a Keto diet and there’s no sugar, but I eat a gummy that’s high in sugar? We don’t know how to answer those questions yet, and that’s why bringing people together from various industries and being those leaders and advocacy for educational and consistent terminology around expectation.

How Pharmacists Can Expand the Conversation on Cannabis-Infused Products

Merril Gilbert, founder and CEO of TraceTrust, explains how a consumer or a retailer might find "A True Dose" on packaging during the Natural Products Expo East in Baltimore, MD.

But part of what’s happening in our beta program and our beta program is really manufacturing and brands that we really see as leader both in the CBD, hemp in legal cannabis world. That’s one right: going through this whole standard. We’re using their labs before we go out have independent labs because we’re getting the labs ready to run the standard: acquiring those samples, meeting all that criteria. And then we’re also working with retailers and distributors to figure out how we’re going to talk about the use of that mark once it’s announced out to the public, because you can’t ask someone to repackage. So, how is that going to get applied, where do we and how do we best communicate this. And remember that the whole focus is not just about validating a safe and reliable product, but also how do we continue to educate.

How to Identify “A True Dose” on Packaging

Merril Gilbert, founder and CEO of TraceTrust, explains "A True Dose" and what it means for third-party certification of cannabis-infused edibles.

So, right now other than the United States Hemp Authority, which was introduced at Expo West in March, there is no independent third-party certification program specific to cannabis-and hemp-derived products. And so that’s really where–as I said–we have found that we needed to start moving that conversation and leading a universal way beyond ISO, ahead of FDA, because we really have to start setting a standard and it really needs to happen as an ecosystem. So, when we wrote this, we really looked at it based in the same principle, a certified organic, or NSF or any of the others. It’s the same criteria. When we look at the full lifecycle, obviously, there’s a very high level of IP protection and confidentiality with any manufacturer that we work with but really important, the retailers are really looking to this to drive them to understand what it is. And so, we look at their formulations, we would look to see that they have good manufacturing processes in place. We look to see that they have verifiable supply chain and we look at the entire lifecycle. So, right now regulartory is very focused on the plant and the oils and extracts and specific. They’re not looking at that essential oil that’s been added to that product that is coming, and that’s where your traduce metals and your impurities are coming from.

And so, we look at that: we look at the label. What are the claims that they are making, how easy is it to understand what a dose is and, when you open it up, how is it for you to understand how to administer that. And then that is what we have the independent lab secure and that’s what we have them learn the standard against. And so, we’re looking for the homogeny of that product.

What Is “A True Dose”?

Merril Gilbert, founder and CEO of TraceTrust, sat down with Total Pharmacy during the Natural Products Expo in Baltimore, MA, about the origins of her company TraceTrust and the principles on which it was founded.

So, what’s really important to know is that my business partner and I came to this industry from the food and beverage manufacturing side and in innovation. And we really saw this as this emerging industry and realized very quickly that we could make beautiful products, that we could compete on many different levels, but really what we saw [as] the biggest concern was in consumer confusion and really unpredictable results. And that if this really was going to be something incorporated into a health and wellness lifestyle, people really needed to understand what they could expect: how it was going to perform; when does it come on; when does it come off; does it matter what time of day; does it matter if I’m a male; does it matter if I’m a female. All of these things. And so we, coming from our expertise, said: you know what, we come from food safety and education; we come from implementing GMTs and third-party certifications, and so we wrote a standard based just on just that around dose accuracy, ingredients, and the entire life cycle of the product and is that something that can be validated through lab process.

The Origins of TraceTrust

Merril Gilbert, founder and CEO of TraceTrust, sat down with Total Pharmacy during the Natural Products Expo in Baltimore, MA, about certain cannabis-infused edible products that pharmacists can look out for in the future.

Again, going back to the fact that we’re advancing so quickly with new technologies and new extraction methodologies, we’re getting so much better at understanding the strains and understanding the effects, and the terpene in the with the THC and CBD and the entourage effect of what these things can do and how they interact is really phenomenal. So, the sublingual is a wonderful way of which to consume, because it’s under the tongue, it’s quick, and it gives the opportunity for time release. Beverages [are] huge: you’re going to just see it explode like crazy, but again because of being able to isolate and really refine the types of effects that you’re trying to create. So I think those are the things and then really with the topicals; health and beauty, pain relief, all of these are really good actors that are making phenomenal things and it’s really–as I said–that education and learning about some of these products and really looking behind the curtain to make sure that they’re really, you know, following good–they’ve got good agriculture and good manufacturing processes in place will really help the really look for things that are emerging and going to make their consumers and their customers extremely happy.

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