LAS VEGAS, July 24, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- During Cardinal
Health's annual Retail Business Conference (RBC), one of the
nation's largest gatherings of independent pharmacists, three
innovative community pharmacies were named as winners of Cardinal
Health's prestigious, annual Independent Pharmacy Best
Practices.
Winners were selected for implementing exceptional programs that
demonstrate how independent pharmacies can improve patient
outcomes, drive business results in their community, and be better
"positioned to win" today, and in the future.
"Through our work serving more than 8,000 independent
pharmacies, nationwide, we've had the opportunity to identify
best-in-class innovation and superior results that serve as a
benchmark for other pharmacies," said Steve
Lawrence, senior vice president of Retail Independent Sales
for Cardinal Health. "We congratulate this year's three inspiring
best practice winners, and are humbled by their commitment to
excellence in community pharmacy. They demonstrate what it takes to
be positioned to win in today's changing health care
landscape."
The 2015 Independent Pharmacy Best Practices winners will each
receive $3,500 from Cardinal Health
to be donated to the pharmacy school or pharmacy association of
their choice. Their stories and several other best-practice ideas
to help community pharmacies be better positioned to win are
available in the Good Medicine magazine distributed at RBC.
This year's winners showcase best practices in three categories
crucial to the success of hometown pharmacies: Wellness Advantage,
Retail Advantage and Business Advantage.
Category: Wellness Advantage
This category recognizes
solutions related to medication adherence, clinical programs, or
other solutions that equip a pharmacy to lead the community in
wellness.
Winner: Medicine Shoppe Pharmacy in Whiting, New Jersey
Al Patel, the Medicine Shoppe
Pharmacy owner in Whiting, created
a program called Discharge Rx Care to help transition patients from
the nursing home to their own home. Patel's program also sought to
help lower nursing home and hospital readmission rates. Discharge
Rx Care works with the nursing home to prepare the medications for
a patient prior to discharge. The pharmacy provides special
adherence packs for morning, noon, evening and bedtime doses. A
pharmacist from Medicine Shoppe Pharmacy visits the patient's home
and personally delivers the medications on the day of discharge.
They review all medications with the patient, and their caregivers,
in the comfort of the patient's home. If needed, they show patients
instructional videos, via iPads, to help them understand how to use
devices such as insulin pens, nebulizers and inhalers. The
pharmacist also completes a full medication reconciliation, and
removes any expired medications or medications that could cause
harmful interactions, from the patient's medicine cabinets. The
Medicine Shoppe Pharmacy follows up with the patient weekly to
answer questions or note any side effects of the medications.
Positioned to win: Previously, when medication
information was provided in the nursing home or in the pharmacy,
the patient was often overwhelmed, tired or anxious to get home.
When patients hear the information in the comfort of their home,
they better understand and retain the information that's shared
with them. The weekly follow-up calls encourage compliance, and
serve as a reminder for refills.
Category: Retail Advantage
This category recognizes
front-end solutions that help maximize profitability, while
enhancing the customer experience.
Winner: Katterman's Pharmacy in Seattle, Washington
Beverly Schaefer and Steve Cone, pharmacists and owners of
Katterman's Pharmacy, worked at Katterman's as pharmacy students
and following graduation, and eventually purchased the store from
Beverly Katterman in 1996. With a
long-standing history in the community and at the pharmacy, they
strive to reinvent their business every three years. The pharmacy's
newest reinvention is focused on serving travelers who are
searching for a quick, convenient way to receive necessary travel
vaccinations. Not only do they administer a full array of
travel-related immunizations, Katterman's offers an extensive line
of travel items to further support this niche clientele. Because
many travelers don't actively plan for the vaccinations they need
until one or two weeks prior to their trip, and it can
take four to six weeks to get an appointment with other
healthcare immunization locations, the pharmacy is able to capture
a larger number of these last-minute vaccinations.
Positioned to win: A travel vaccination customer at
Katterman's Pharmacy spends an average of $300 for goods and services, and vaccines are
usually administered for two or more travelers at a time. This
equates to $600-$1,200 in revenue for
each travel vaccination appointment. Some customers travel from
more than an hour away to receive travel vaccinations. Much of the
new customer traffic comes from word-of-mouth marketing or from
website search results from people trying to identify where they
can receive yellow fever vaccines.
Category: Business Advantage
This category recognizes
proactive solutions to help retail pharmacies protect their core
business driver - the prescription.
Winner: El Dorado TrueCare Pharmacy in El Dorado, Kansas
When Mike Bellesine, pharmacist
and owner of El Dorado TrueCare Pharmacy, realized his pharmacy's
drive-up window service was causing patients more pain than
convenience, he knew he had to find a viable solution or risk
losing business. On busy days, his pharmacy fills more than 900
prescriptions, and often had a line of cars out to the street. His
unusual answer, a restaurant-style pager system, took customers by
surprise, but in the end has proven to be a driver for new
business. The pharmacy provides patients who use the drive-up
window with a numbered pager that reaches anywhere in the parking
lot. These patients are given the same priority as any other
patients waiting inside the store. When a patient's prescription(s)
are ready, the pager is activated to notify the patient to come
back to the drive-up window.
Positioned to win: Patients are now switching to El
Dorado TrueCare Pharmacy just to take advantage of the fastest and
most efficient drive-up window in town. The number of register
transactions at the drive-up window has increased dramatically from
an average of 50 per day to more than 120 per day.
About the Cardinal Health Retail Business Conference
(RBC)
The Cardinal Health Retail Business Conference (RBC),
held July 22-25 in Las Vegas, provides independent pharmacists
and pharmacy franchise owners with the opportunity to network with
and learn from thousands of their peers from across the nation,
while gaining new insights to improve the effectiveness and
efficiency of their businesses. The annual event provides
independent pharmacy owners, pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and
other pharmacy industry professionals across the United States with access to
pharmaceutical manufacturers, buying opportunities, continuing
education sessions and programs to help pharmacists reduce costs
and improve patient care and efficiency. For more information,
visit www.CardinalHealth.com/RBC or use #RBCWin on Twitter.
About Cardinal Health
Headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, Cardinal Health, Inc. (NYSE:
CAH) is a $91 billion health care
services company that improves the cost-effectiveness of health
care. Cardinal Health helps pharmacies, hospitals, ambulatory
surgery centers, clinical laboratories and physician offices focus
on patient care while reducing costs, enhancing efficiency and
improving quality. Cardinal Health is an essential link in the
health care supply chain, providing pharmaceuticals and medical
products and services to more than 100,000 locations each day and
is also the industry-leading direct-to-home medical supplies
distributor. The company is a leading manufacturer of medical and
surgical products, including gloves, surgical apparel and fluid
management products. In addition, the company operates the nation's
largest network of radiopharmacies that dispense products to aid in
the early diagnosis and treatment of disease. Ranked #26 on the
Fortune 500, Cardinal Health employs 34,000 people worldwide. More
information about the company may be found at
www.cardinalhealth.com and @CardinalHealth on Twitter.
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SOURCE Cardinal Health