How to Mine Your Pharmacy’s Database to Increase Sales

What if you could find a brand new way to increase profits using the information you already have? Believe it or not, you can easily find sales opportunities by investing minimal time to mine your pharmacy’s database. Here at Pharmacy Development Services, we train our member pharmacies to use a program called Profitability Pathways. It is a system that shows the pharmacy team how to tap into existing niches based on specific disease states. With this program, pharmacy staff will learn how to anticipate patient needs and identify ways to convert low-profit patients into high-profit opportunities.

Step 1: Run Software Reports

To get started, you will need to use your pharmacy computer’s software to run seven different reports. Running all of these reports will allow you to confidently make decisions based on data, instead of a gut feeling or a guess. These seven reports include:

• Highest Profit $ Drugs
• Highest Profit % Drugs
• Highest Profit Doctors
• Highest Profit Insurance Companies
• Top 20 Drugs Filled
• Margin Over $40
• Daily Money LOSS Report

You may find that your customers are looking for different items than what you thought you needed to focus on selling them. On the other hand, the data could reveal that a particular insurance company is much more profitable than you realized. The reports will provide data that can guide your next steps as a business owner.

Step 2: Look for Trends

You may find commonalities in your customer base that need further examination. Are many of your patients being treated for the same disease? Do you have a large number of geriatric patients? Do you have a high number of female patients? As you identify trends in your database, you have two options for determining growth opportunities – disease-based pathways or prescription-based pathways.

• Option 1: Disease-Based Pathways

If you find that many customers are older, you may want to focus on diseases that typically affect aging people like arthritis or high cholesterol. Perhaps you have a much larger demographic of female customers and decide to concentrate on women’s issues like menopause treatment. Choose and create Profitability Pathways for popular diseases based on the services you provide. It’s up to you!

• Option 2: Prescription-Based Pathways

Examine the most profitable prescriptions in the pharmacy and begin creating Profitability Pathways to increase the number of fills. You may find that a particular drug or group of drugs is extremely profitable and decide to focus on those instead of a disease. If you identify that a specific diabetes drug is extremely profitable for you, you may decide to focus on increasing sales in that area instead of focusing on diabetes as a whole.

After running reports and analyzing trends, you will be ready to move forward with new techniques to increase sales. By mining your database, you will be able to use solid data to identify patient needs. Your team will be able to recommend supplementary products, programs and services to support patient care and increase revenue.

Don’t miss the opportunity to increase customer trust, while simultaneously boosting profits. Are you interested in finding new ways to increase profit? If so, register for a free pharmacy business assessment now. PDS Business Advisors are available to help pharmacy owners discover new ways to improve their independent pharmacy businesses.