Customers regularly show Chrissy Barr, Pharm.D., and her nine staff members how much they appreciate her Medicine Shoppe Pharmacy in North Little Rock, Ark., stopping by with gifts, food, and flowers during the holiday season.
“I love what I do. It doesn’t even feel like I’m coming to work when I come to work,” says Barr, who purchased the pharmacy from the previous owner six years ago after working there for 10 years. Barr, who fell in love with pharmacy when she started working in one at the age of 15, graduated in the first Pharm.D. class out of the College of Pharmacy at the University of Arkansas. Barr’s three daughters work at the pharmacy today along with six other staff members, filling an average of 120 scripts a day. There is a small front end with basic over-the-counter items. The pharmacy also does compounding and offers adherence packaging through Dispill.
Since graduating from pharmacy school Barr has used the RxMaster pharmacy system and continues to be impressed by the customer service and its commitment to adding new features to improve the pharmacy business. The customer service, in particular, has made Barr a loyal customer. “Besides the fact it’s easy to use, if something goes wrong, the customer service is amazing,” she says. “And they are always willing to hear an idea I have about a new feature.”
One example of a new feature came about because of COVID-19. The pharmacy has seen an increased in electronic prescriptions. To make these prescriptions easier to track, Barr asked RxMaster to add a fill date so the prescriptions will automatically get added to the queue on the day they should be filled. “The system gets better with every update,” says Barr.
Integrations Improve Efficiency
There are three new integrations that Barr anticipates will improve workflow. The first is between RxMaster and OutcomesMTM. Rather than jumping between the Outcome’s web portal and the RxMaster system to manage her MTM (medication therapy management) program, the Outcomes Targeted Intervention Program will display on her RxMaster system. The staff can then offer counseling to a patient when they are on the phone or speaking with the patient in the pharmacy. Barr feels this will make for more efficient workflow and better customer service.
With a growing immunization program Barr says her system is now integrated with immunization registries to report the immunizations given. This fall the pharmacy had administered more than 500 flu shots. Barr says she’s registered to administer the COVID-19 vaccine when it’s available.
Along with the MTM program the pharmacy uses Dispill packaging. A key benefit to Dispill is that it can be customized easily for each patient’s needs. For example, a younger patient on ADHD (attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder) meds will have Dispill packaging to take to school and packaging for the weekend. This provides a convenience for the school nurse. Elderly patients benefit from Dispill as well, since they don’t have to coordinate their multiple medications on their own. Barr relates how one patient who was having mental health issues because of a lack of adherence saw a dramatic improvement when she began using the adherence packaging for her medications. “Everyone can benefit. If you get busy, you can forget if you took your medication,” she says.
The benefit of having specific information in the patient profile is illustrated with the IOU button RxMaster added. Barr says this allows the staff to easily complete a partial fill and see what’s owed to the patient.
The flexibility of RxMaster means that Barr can choose the features that best meet her workflow routines. Not a new feature, but still a favorite, is Sack-It, which is useful with deliveries. With Sack-It, multiple prescriptions for a patient are each scanned and then combined on a single receipt attached to a bag. At pickup just one receipt needs to be scanned to check out all prescriptions.
“We’ve liked using this for deliveries,” says Barr. “We’ll do a Sack-It receipt and keep the receipt on the delivery notebook. When the driver comes back, we scan that receipt and put the check in the cash register. It’s good because you close the loop on the prescription.”
The RxMaster drug usage report shows the medications the pharmacy fills during a certain date range. Barr likes this because she can order expensive drugs when she needs them during her two large orders a month, limiting the time expensive drugs sit on the shelves. “That’s very helpful as you can have the drug in stock when the patient needs it, but it’s not sitting there for the entire month until they need it again,” says Barr. Barr uses the RxMaster point-of-sale system to manage front-end inventory. With compounds she likes the fact that she can enter all the ingredients and RxMaster helps determine a price.
Barr is optimistic about the future of pharmacy, especially with the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision around pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). “If they would put me on a level playing field with all the chain pharmacies, I could do some serious damage,” she says.
Barr is clear on the reason it’s easy to do her job: the personalized customer service from RxMaster. “They are amazing and I love that when I call, I know who I’m talking to,” she says. “They let me easily do what I want to do.” CT
Maggie Lockwood is staff writer and VP at ComputerTalk. She can be reached at maggie@computertalk.com.