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Tapping Technology

Supermarket chains and big-box stores with pharmacies have one tremendous advantage over traditional drug store chains: They have thousands of people coming in each week picking up food and other basic household necessities, creating tremendous traffic that could be converted into pharmacy sales. However, the big challenge that food and pharmacy retailers have consistently faced is how to take better

Supermarket chains and big-box stores with pharmacies have one tremendous advantage over traditional drug store chains: They have thousands of people coming in each week picking up food and other basic household necessities, creating tremendous traffic that could be converted into pharmacy sales.

However, the big challenge that food and pharmacy retailers have consistently faced is how to take better advantage of their opportunity to convert more regular shoppers into buyers of prescription medications, over-the-counter products, vitamins, nutritionals and even value-added services such as medication counseling, disease management and nutrition counseling.

Part of the challenge, until fairly recently, was that pharmacists were too busy manually filling prescriptions, answering phones and performing other tasks to engage consistently in intensive patient counseling, or that supermarket pharmacies did not have the visibility to transform themselves into destination departments, meaning that many regular customers did not even notice pharmacies were in the store.

But in recent years, pharmacy technologies have changed that picture. Now, more sophisticated pharmacy management systems, two-way interactive voice-response (IVR) systems, automated pill counters, fully automated robotics, the ability to send and receive prescription data electronically, and relatively new technologies like kiosk-based prescription pickup systems have created operational efficiencies that are allowing supermarket pharmacies to invest in new types of wellness services.

Verne Mounts, director of pharmacy and health services for Wooster, Ohio-based Buehler's Food Markets, noted that the time and labor savings generated from modern pharmacy technologies are allowing supermarket pharmacy chains to transform themselves into health and wellness destination shops.

Since so many diseases overlap, such as diabetes and obesity, Mounts said, comprehensive patient care entails more than “just giving a patient a drug. There's a whole approach to health care that is needed, and that's what we as a supermarket pharmacy can provide — and provide better than a traditional pharmacy, because we have nutritional foods, we have supplements, we have vitamins and minerals,” Mounts said. “We have the product assortment, space and customer traffic to be viable wellness centers.”

Christopher Thomsen, who tracks pharmacy technology trends at his consulting company, the Thomsen Group, Kansas City, Mo., described the unique positioning of food store pharmacies as “health and wellness centers” as a major trend in supermarket pharmacy today.

“Instead of treating pharmacy as a box that sits somewhere inside the store and sells pills,” Thomsen said, “many supermarkets are now working to tie together their health and food mix with on-site nutrition and diet experts, and/or they are opening in-store health clinics and then combining those services with the health care expertise of their pharmacists.”

That trend is being facilitated, Thomsen said, “by the investment that so many of these pharmacies have made and continue to make in the overhaul and investment of their pharmacy management systems, automated prescription-dispensing systems, IVR and so many other new and exciting technologies.”

VALUE AND VISIBILITY

Brad Dayton, director of pharmacy systems for Ahold USA divisions Stop & Shop Supermarket Co., Quincy, Mass., Giant Food of Landover, Md., and Giant Food Stores, Carlisle, Pa., oversaw many of Ahold's investments in pharmacy technologies over the past 10 years. Now Dayton works closely with Ahold's director of clinical programs and marketing, Greg Jones, to create innovative marketing programs that enhance both the value and visibility of their in-store pharmacies.

Among the advances that have significantly improved efficiency and productivity in Ahold stores, Dayton said, are the deployment of interactive voice-response systems; the use of bar-code scanners in stores with Kirby Lester automated pill counters; the installation of fully automated ScriptPro robotics in 20 high-volume Giant Landover and Stop & Shop pharmacies, which are integrated with Ahold's PMS systems; and the growing adoption by physicians of e-prescribing software.

These systems, Dayton said, “successfully took a lot of the up-front work away from technicians and pharmacists, reducing the amount of time they needed to spend in repetitive manual tasks. Today, for example, 65% of all our refills come through the ATEB IVR system, which can now also do outgoing reminders to patients.”

A pharmacist in one high-prescription-volume store with a ScriptPro installation recently told Jones how she and her staff were able to handle a full day of flu immunizations and still get many prescriptions filled without long customer wait times. “She told me how well the robot has streamlined processing. In the past, she couldn't have freed up the time for the immunizations because the pharmacist would have been behind the counter processing prescriptions,” he said.

Hy-Vee, West Des Moines, Iowa, which has 220 pharmacies, is using some of the time and money savings generated from its investments in pharmacy technology to give customers a number of value-added services, including in-store flu immunizations, diabetes counseling and medication management counseling.

The chain has nurse-staffed health clinics in 11 stores to supplement the health offerings provided by the pharmacies. Dietitians are on hand in about 130 stores. “They complement the services of the pharmacists,” said Bob Egeland, Hy-Vee's vice president of pharmacy.

DESTINATION SHOP

“Our company's vision statement,” Egeland said, “is to become a destination shop for health and wellness products and services by making lives healthier and happier.”

To create the operational efficiencies that support its strategic goal, Hy-Vee has invested in dispensing robots for 33 of its highest-prescription-volume pharmacies, automated Kirby Lester pill counters for many mid-volume stores, an IVR system capable of sending outgoing targeted messages to select patients, and software that enables the reception and transmission of electronic prescription information.

Next year, Hy-Vee is planning to replace its older legacy PMS system with a new, more advanced PMS that has a workflow application, which, Egeland said, “will make our pharmacies even more efficient by giving us the ability to centralize and balance our workflow processes.”

Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart Stores designed its own pharmacy management system, named ConnexUs, “with the customer in mind,” spokeswoman Christi Davis Gallagher said. “At the end of the process, it allows the pharmacist to spend time with the customer.”

ConnexUs has been in place since 2001 and, said Gallagher, “has proven to be an efficient system to help our pharmacists better take care of their customers, especially in situations such as hurricane evacuations, because the system allows customers to fill their prescriptions anywhere in the country.”

To replace a PMS that Buehler's Mounts described as “not ready for prime time chain pharmacy,” Buehler's recently converted to a Web-based PMS system from Cerner Etreby, which is based in Garden Grove, Calif. Cerner Etreby's system gives Buehler's a number of enhancements, including what Mounts calls “a huge centralized database for patients, physicians and pricing, which has been extremely advantageous.”

Among other things, the system has made it much simpler and easier for patients to transfer prescriptions from one pharmacy to another. “It's a convenience for our patients and a major time-saver for our pharmacists,” Mounts said. “Our patients definitely see it as a value.”

Workload-balancing software came with the PMS system, and Buehler's is now customizing it, Mounts said, “to meet our needs. Our technicians are nationally certified, so as we roll out the workflow software, we'll be able to use our technicians to manage the distribution functions from data entry through selecting, counting, filling and labeling. Our pharmacists will then have more time to use their educations in a meaningful way — both to get out in front to counsel patients, as well as to verify the work of the technicians.”

In its McKesson Zadall PMS, Ahold USA has created a semi-centralized patient database and is planning to upgrade its software to create a centralized physician database next year, saving data-entry time and automating additional back-end processes with third-party payors.

By the end of next year, Modesto, Calif.-based Save Mart Supermarkets, which operates 115 pharmacies, plans to upgrade its current, store-based PDX PMS to the newest generation of PDX Enterprise software, a Web-based system that will allow Save Mart to centralize all its pharmacy management functions.

Once Save Mart can centralize its workflow, said Michele Snider, senior director of pharmacy, the plan is for Save Mart to maximize its current ScriptPro and AutoMed robots by integrating them with the PMS software and using them as “mini regional central processors and central fulfillment sites.”

The enterprise system, said Snider, will also give Save Mart the ability to control access to its medications and pharmacy systems with biometric passwords. Save Mart also plans to put in more robotics as prescription volume increases within individual stores, Snider said.

ACCURACY AND SPEED

Mike Coughlin, president and chief executive officer of Mission, Kan.-based ScriptPro, a pharmacy robotics and automation company, noted that pharmacy retailers are realizing that many customers are looking for more than just low prices.

“So they promote the accuracy and speed that our systems deliver,” he said. “They've also found that if there is any bad experience with their pharmacy, excessive wait times or an error, their customers will take their business somewhere else. So retailers are really zeroing in on technology as being the key for the growth of their business.”

The deployment of integrated voice-response systems, as well as the deployment of automated robotic dispensers in high-prescription-volume pharmacies, has generated significant time and labor savings.

The presence of robots has reduced labor costs in Hy-Vee's 33 stores equipped with robots to about 120 basis points below the company average, said Egeland, while the company's ATEB IVR system currently handles about 70% of all incoming calls — another significant time-saver for Hy-Vee pharmacists and their staff (100 basis points equal 1%).

Having an IVR capable of transmitting outgoing messages, said Ahold's Jones, has given the company “an opportunity to deliver targeted messages to consumers who call in to our Giant-Landover and Stop & Shop pharmacies.

“We use the IVR to talk about our programs and services. For example, right now we are talking to consumers about our $9.99 generic drug program, but we use it too for special events, like our pharmacists doing immunizations in our stores. Every patient or doctor who calls in hears our target messages. It gives us a very efficient advertising venue for getting a concise message to every customer who calls in. There's no hit-or-miss in the approach.”

John Beckner, director of pharmacy and health services for Richmond, Va.-based Ukrop's Super Markets, with 29 stores and 22 pharmacies, said the company is looking at upgrading its IVR to enable it to manage outgoing calls. One of the benefits, he added, would be “capturing additional refills, as well as providing an additional customer health service.”

In mid-October, Ahold's Giant-Landover stores began using their IVR to call patients not enrolled in the automatic refill program, but whose refills were coming due, to remind them to order their refills.

To continue to enhance its marketing and value-added pharmacy/health/wellness services, Ahold currently has several health-related pilot programs under way, including call-backs to parents of pediatric patients so pharmacists can follow up and answer questions that parents might have. They can also remind parents that Ahold offers free medication flavoring if that should be an issue with a child. That pilot, under way for the past month, is about to be expanded to higher-prescription-volume stores.

ENABLING PROMOTION

At Save Mart, robots — in conjunction with other pharmacy technologies in its 115 pharmacies — recently enabled the chain to launch a marketing program focused on its speedy filling of prescriptions, said Snider.

Save Mart is offering a 19-minute guarantee on prescriptions filled in its Save Mart and Lucky stores with pharmacies and is backing the guarantee with a “dinner and a movie” offer if a prescription is not filled in that time.

“The operational efficiencies we achieved from our pharmacy technology allowed us to have efficient, fast customer service, and that was one of the reasons we were able to do our 19-minute program,” said Snider. “We realized we were filling prescriptions quicker than some of our competitors, who had long lines, and we decided to advertise the fact. I don't think a lot of retailers who simply discount are aware of their customers and the value of their time.”

The program, said Snider, “is working out very well, and it's gaining momentum.”

In mid-October, Ahold's Giant-Landover stores began using their IVR to call patients not enrolled in the automatic refill program, but whose refills were coming due, to remind them to order their refills.

To continue to enhance its marketing and value-added pharmacy/health/wellness services, Ahold currently has several health-related pilot programs under way, including call-backs to parents of pediatric patients so pharmacists can follow up and answer questions that parents might have. They can also remind parents that Ahold offers free medication flavoring if that should be an issue with a child. That pilot, under way for the past month, is about to be expanded to higher-prescription-volume stores.

ENABLING PROMOTION

At Save Mart, robots — in conjunction with other pharmacy technologies in its 115 pharmacies — recently enabled the chain to launch a marketing program focused on its speedy filling of prescriptions, said Snider.

Save Mart is offering a 19-minute guarantee on prescriptions filled in its Save Mart and Lucky stores with pharmacies and is backing the guarantee with a “dinner and a movie” offer if a prescription is not filled in that time.

“The operational efficiencies we achieved from our pharmacy technology allowed us to have efficient, fast customer service, and that was one of the reasons we were able to do our 19-minute program,” said Snider. “We realized we were filling prescriptions quicker than some of our competitors, who had long lines, and we decided to advertise the fact. I don't think a lot of retailers who simply discount are aware of their customers and the value of their time.”

The program, said Snider, “is working out very well, and it's gaining momentum.”