Startup Offers Deliveries and Reminders

ScriptDrop, a health-care technology company that addresses the issues of prescription abandonment and medication nonadherence, was negotiating a contract for its prescription delivery service with grocery chain Albertsons in late August when Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, dropping more than 40 inches of rain on greater Houston.

Because residents could not get through floodwaters to the few that were open, Albertsons asked ScriptDrop if it could go to Houston and quickly start a prescription delivery service. They expedited the contract and ScriptDrop’s CEO Nick Potts and Amanda Way, Vice President for Pharmacy Sales and Business Development, arrived in Houston. They set up ScriptDrop with Randalls, an Albertsons-owned company, to ensure patients got their prescriptions along with co-pay assistance.

Related article: Pharmacists Tackle Hurricane Harvey

“We needed to come together quickly to help out people that needed it,” Potts said.

Harvey pushed up the start date in Houston, but Potts said ScriptDrop will soon be rolling out across the United States for Albertsons, one of the largest food and drug retailers in the country, with more than 2,200 stores including Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, Shaw’s, and Randalls.

ScriptDrop will also be expanding its free prescription delivery service, currently operating mainly in New York City, to other clients, including BestRx, a provider of software technology systems to more than 1,000 pharmacies in the United States.

The other part of its business, a medicine reminder service, is being piloted through early 2018 and should be ready for launch by late second quarter or early third quarter, Potts said.

The two services grew out of concerns that 25% of people who leave a pharmacy without their medication don’t return. Once on their therapy, patients don’t always take their medicine as prescribed. Potts and cofounder Larry Scott learned about prescription abandonment and medication nonadherence when both worked at a health-care startup called CoverMyMeds. They founded Columbus-based ScriptDrop in 2016 to address those issues.

The idea is to connect patients, pharmacies, and health-care providers to transfer and store information on patients and their medications. Pharmacists and health-care providers will know that the medications prescribed are being delivered and that patients are taking them as directed. Patients will receive digital tokens that are paid for by pharmaceutical manufacturers as rewards for adhering to their protocol, which can be used to reduce co-pays.

Hemal DesaiThe software was designed to make it as simple as possible for pharmacists. They can just click the ScriptDrop button on their computer system. Hemal Desai, president of BestRx in Oak Brook, IL, said ScriptDrop’s free prescription delivery service has been integrated into his company’s suite of software products for the independent pharmacies that participate in its pharmacy management system.

“When ScriptDrop came along and said we can do this delivery service at no cost to the pharmacies, it was a no brainer to us,” Desai said, noting that deliveries can be expensive and time-consuming for independent pharmacies to arrange.

Once the pharmacist hits the ScriptDrop button, the information goes directly to a courier service that will pick up the medication at the store and deliver it to the patient. The information is electronically entered into the patient’s record, which can be automatically retrieved. Patients will receive reminders to take their medicine through texts and robocalls.