As we near the end of the first quarter, it’s time to pick your head up from the trenches and take a moment to look around your pharmacy. Take inventory of your four walls and everything in it. What do you see? 

Look at your team. Do you see a team that bickers with each other, or do you see a team who works together to accomplish a singular mission? Do they have a purpose in their everyday duties with measurable goals and milestones, or are they running through the motions of daily operation?  

Now look in your store. Take inventory of your endcaps, your checkout counters, carpets, uniforms… Are they clean and orderly?  

What you see right now is what your patients see when they walk through that door. Making small, incremental changes throughout the year to address cosmetic, structural or operational issues will compound to large wins by the end of the year.  

The idea is not to be consistently perfect, but to be consistently better. 

Instead of making unattainable promises to yourself, your business, your employees, and your patients resolve instead to do small, minor adjustments to your everyday routine that will become powerful catalyst for lasting growth.   

That’s why, instead of making grand resolutions this first quarter, make a simple commitment: “I am going to do something every day to make my pharmacy better.” 

Below are four simple habits you can implement to upgrade your 2018:  

Detox Your Workplace Culture 

If you want to make this the best year yet, you can’t do it alone. You need to rely on your team to help your patients, fill prescriptions and rise above the petty bickering that can often bring teams down.  

While complete culture change is often a long, tough road, the process must start at the top with simple first steps.  

Catch your employees doing something right. As owners and managers, we are too often fixated on recognizing everything employees do wrong. Before we realize it, only negativity comes out. To reverse this, aim to create a culture of positivity by recognizing an employee for a positive action every day. Let an employee know in a simple handwritten note that she did a good job with a patient that day or say thank you for covering for her sick coworker. You can spread positivity and encouragement in just two minutes every day. Just one action a day can have a long-lasting effect.

Spring Clean Your Pharmacy 

Every day, countless feet walk around your pharmacy. The look and smell become background white noise that you and your team no longer notice. However, that isn’t the case for your patients! Trust us; they notice the stain on the ceiling or the faded sign on the front door and, yes, your worn-out carpets.  

While a full remodel may not be possible or even needed, you can do some spring cleaning! Some examples of fast, easy improvements can be:

• Moving OTC products around to new locations
• Purchasing new waiting area chairs
• Placing fresh daily hours stickers on the front door

Small and inexpensive changes like these can give a whole new look to your pharmacy and a new appreciation by your patients.  

Be Thankful  

The role of pharmacy owner is stressful and tiring.  It is often too easy to ruminate on only the challenges and roadblocks you experience. Gratitude, as simple as that sounds, can rewire you to become a more positive person. Taking a moment to appreciate something each day can boost your happiness and productivity. You can do this on your own, by thinking of 3 things you are thankful for every night before bed. You can also include your team and share positive stories at the end of the day, instead of just focusing on daily frustrations.  

Set SMART Pharmacy Goals

Most of us familiar with goal-setting realize that broad goal statements don’t translate into accomplishments without some heavy lifting and correcting course at least once. Specificity is critical when it comes to getting goals across the finish line. SMART goals are:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Realistic
• Timely

Instead of saying I want a better year, you should say “I want to make $50,000 more in profit in 2018,“ or “I want to attend all of my son’s football games this season.“  

When you have a clear vision of your goal, you are more likely to achieve it. Encourage your employees to do the same for themselves, both personally, and professionally. If you’re not sure what is achievable in your pharmacy, we invite you to speak with one of our account executives that can share with you what other pharmacy owners have achieved in a single year.  

Applying incremental and impactful changes will add up to major wins by the end of the year. Regardless of the changes you implement; the point is to keep moving, consistently aim to improve and take quarterly reviews of your pharmacy.  

Launch Your Pharmacy to Amazing Heights in 2018

Want to learn more about what you should be focusing on in 2018? Watch the PDS 2018 Super-Conference recap video below for the 5 Key Takeaways from the conference and the strategies you should set your sights on to make this year the best your pharmacy has seen yet.

We’ll be the first to admit that the cards are stacked against pharmacy owners. Pharmacies are faced with fees, clawbacks and dwindling reimbursements at every turn. It’s no wonder many are trying creative methods to squeeze extra profit from any source they can find in order to avoid shrinking margins. Your PBM could make matters far worse. Optum users, we’re looking at you. Read on to find out more.

The creative method we’re referring to is the practice of choosing smaller wholesalers in order to save a few bucks. Generally, this makes sense. You pay less for a drug on the wholesale level to increase margins on the retail side. But this is a slippery slope, especially if your wholesaler is not compliant.

What Does Compliance Have to Do With Profit?

For pharmacies that contract with Optum, everything.

If you’re reading this blog, you probably know that Optum is one of the “Big Three” PBMs responsible for 80% of all insurance claims. Starting April 1, 2018, Optum is requiring all wholesalers and suppliers to be VAWD Certified and if they’re not, the pharmacy dispensing the drug can expect audits, clawbacks and possibly even loss of the contract.

This is why it’s so imperative that you do not unsuspectingly fall into this hole while you’re chasing a marginal increase. Is a 2% bump worth an audit or a loss of contract?

What is a VAWD Certification Anyways?

VAWD stands for Verified-Accredited Wholesale Distributor.

This credential is in addition to the standard operating procedures that are required to get licensed in each individual state. In the United States, each state has their own set of guidelines required to become a wholesaler. What is required by one state, may not be in another and can cause potential misfires when doing business across state lines. The VAWD certification is important because in some states, it is very easy to get a wholesale license and the standards for where the drugs can be sourced from is more relaxed.

VAWD ensures that not only is the wholesaler meeting the qualifications and standards of their home state, but they’re also meeting the qualifications of all 50 states, the FDA, and more.

While this certification is raising the drug chain standards, stopping gray market drugs and is safer for the patients, it does create an extra layer of headaches for pharmacy owners.

Find Out More in Our Crucial Latest eBook

In our latest eBook, the Pharmacy Wholesaler Buyer Beware Guide we’ll show you what those extra layers of headaches look like for owners and how to ensure you’re properly protecting your pharmacy.

In this FREE eBook, you’ll also learn… 

1. What it means to be VAWD certified
2. How to identify wholesalers that could be harming your standing with Optum
3. Why sourcing the cheapest drugs isn’t always worth the risk
4. The 3 questions to ask your new and existing suppliers
5. The impact reputable wholesalers can have on your bottom line and patients’ lives  (We’re talking $3,000 in additional profits per week!)

Download the eBook now and save yourself or a fellow pharmacy owner from the dreaded clawback, audit or lost contract.

Launch Your Profitability the Right Way

Why make an extra 1–8% in profits and risk your Optum contract by saving pennies on a wholesaler, when you can earn thousands towards your bottom line by doing what the most successful pharmacies do?

Come see for yourself why we are so confident in our ability to change your life and improve the profitability of your pharmacy that we have a conference guarantee. If you don’t see the value of the PDS Super-Conference after the first day, we’ll reimburse your travel up to $500 and give you an additional $300 — no questions asked.

Still Not Convinced?

If attending a career-changing event is not for you at this time, you can join the discussion on topics just like this one, with other owners on PDSadvantage. It’s free to join and allows you to access the pharmacy owner forum and participate in these trending topics. Click here to create your free account on PDSadvantage,

Here at PDS, we take pride in highlighting some of our incredible solutions partners. We know these companies have the potential to revolutionize pharmacies just like yours through their products and services. We’re excited to introduce Liberty Software; read on for their sponsored blog post about the benefits improving patient care and profitability through strategic efficiency.

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Independent pharmacy is no stranger to competition. The industry becomes tighter by the day and owners have to look for innovative ways to stay above the curve. We can all agree we’re in the business of helping others, but we also need to make a profit to stay in business.

One solution many owners ignore lies behind the pharmacy counter. Improving the workflows behind the pharmacy counter will drive your business into better productivity, better patient care, and better profitability.

Below, we’ve included five significant steps that you can take to improve your pharmacy’s workflows – in turn improving both the care you provide your patients and your profit margins.

1. Examine the Status Quo.

   Examine the current state of your business. How are technicians and pharmacists operating now? Are there pain points or bottlenecks in existing workflows? Speaking with technicians and pharmacists who do the work every day is one of the best ways to identify areas for improvement.

2. Establish Metrics.

   If you don’t measure where you are now, how will you measure whether changes are positively impacting your business? Scripts filled per hour is a good starting point. Consider using software to track data entry errors. Customize your metrics to your company’s unique practices and needs.

3. Improve the Use of Space.

   You want to physically minimize the amount of movement involved in filling a script, as well as make sure technicians and pharmacists aren’t vying for the use of the same space at the same time. Small slowdowns can add up to big drops in productivity, so focusing on your most-used spaces and heavy-traffic areas, both for employees and customers, can make a big difference in your pharmacy’s productivity.

4. Automate.

   Your employees need to be operating at the top of their licensed capabilities to provide the best service to your customers. Pharmacists shouldn’t have to spend time doing the work of technicians, and technicians don’t need to spend time on processes that could be automated. From automatic prescription processing to software that minimizes time spent on data entry, automating repetitive pharmacy workflow operations can have a measurable impact on your bottom line.

5. Focus on Strategy.

   Strategic decision-making shouldn’t be limited to upper-management, back-office meetings. Get your staff on board with the company’s big-picture plan, and you’ll be aligning your entire operation around the same goals. Don’t hand down mandates – ask those in the trenches for their considerable expertise and input.

As you implement changes based on these steps, remember to periodically step back and measure the effects of those changes. Move slowly – don’t implement 20 new initiatives at once, or you’ll have a hard time determining what caused the changes you’ve measured. Deliberate, strategic moves in collaboration with your highly qualified staff will help your business maximize pharmacy workflow and profits in a challenging market.

 

About the Author:

Pharmacy software for pharmacy success. Liberty Software helps pharmacies improve profitability, increase patient safety, and enhance patient care. Here at Liberty, we believe that we have designed a revolutionary pharmacy management software platform. Why do we say that? It’s not just the technology, although it is built on Microsoft’s newest technology platform. It’s not just the feature list, although it is impressive. More than anything, we believe that it is the user experience. Prescriptions can be filled quickly and accurately while protecting patient safety. Many pharmacists say that it is the easiest software they have ever used.

 

Do you remember taking marketing or business classes in pharmacy school? Yea, we didn’t think so. That’s because pharmacy schools don’t teach for pharmacy ownership. Owners must go out and find unique and impactful ways to grow their business. Most do it through trial and error, and we respect those that do because that means they’re in for the hustle! But if you’re reading this blog, you know that there are better ways to grow your business than to take unnecessary risks on your money and time.

These better ways involve putting your faith in your pharmacy owner peers and trusted pharmacy experts. These people have done the research and development for you and have replicated success time and again. It all boils down to one question:

Would you walk away from proven results, incredible ROI, and steeper growth in your pharmacy?

Many owners will read this and walk away. We get it, no one likes to change unless their life depends on it. For those who are willing to jump in and get their feet wet, we’re talking to you.

At the PDS Super-Conference, we’re pulling out all the stops to make every single moment a teachable one. Learn more about how to drive growth, build a productive culture and increase profitability among the most elite pharmacy owners in the country. Come see for yourself why we are so confident in our ability to change your life and improve the profitability of your pharmacy that we have a conference guarantee. If you don’t see the value of the PDS Super-Conference after the first day, we’ll reimburse your travel up to $500 and give you an additional $300 — no questions asked.