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In this interview, TCGRx EVP of Sales and Marketing Matt Noffsinger talks about what you should really be thinking about when you hear the term “high-volume dispensing” these days. You’ll be surprised that it’s not necessarily a huge central-fill or mail-order operation. TCGRx’s modular CentralRx™ solution can help bring the efficiencies that drive those traditional high-volume settings right down to any dispensing volume and apply them piece by piece to meet a pharmacy’s needs and growth strategy.
ComputerTalk: Matt, outline for us where the market is with high-volume dispensing technology. 
Matt Noffsinger: High-volume dispensing addresses multiple needs and multiple markets. An example of that is, yes, we can facilitate central fill for a multiple-location pharmacy that wants to fill in one location and then distribute those meds to remote locations, which would then dispense medications to patients. We can do that all day long.
But high-volume solutions can also address the needs of mail-order pharmacy. These are pharmacies that are packaging meds and then sending them directly to a patient’s home. Or they can address the needs of a long-term care pharmacy that is looking for ways to automatically weigh and sort packages, to recommend the best delivery method, or simply to organize by delivery route through an automated system.
What’s key to understanding where TCGRx is with high-volume dispensing is understanding that what we really offer isn’t central fill or even a single high-volume product, but a breadth of different modules within our CentralRx product line.
| Learn MoreMatt Noffsinger’s two questions to ask yourself before you talk to a tech vendor.
Two Examples of pharmacies making the high-volume move. Click Here to Read More About High-Volume Solutions |
CT: What are some of the indications that a pharmacy might want to look at high-volume solutions?
Noffsinger: I think pharmacies across the volume spectrum would be surprised to learn what our CentralRx product line brings to the table. The spine of our CentralRx product is a software module that we call CoreFlex. This is a perpetual inventory management system and an intelligent order router that can send prescriptions into different dispensing queues in the pharmacy — automated or manual, packaging or vials. It also has business logic embedded in it that can help pharmacies with, for example, their will-call or manifesting.
So this core software component can really help any size pharmacy, and then as they scale, that’s when they can start plugging in different pieces of the automation that people might more typically think of when they hear “high volume.” But when you start with the CoreFlex as your spine, you then have the flexibility to scale with vial filling or bottle filling, or whatever your needs are. You could plug a module in just to address the current section of your need. Then, later perhaps, compliance packaging begins seeing more volume for a pharmacy, and we can plug in compliance packaging with cards or with pouch packaging.
So when a pharmacy looks at us, for example, and says, “Gosh, I don’t know if I’m ready for a large, high-volume system,” what they really should be asking is “What components of a high-volume system address my needs today?” Then they can just add and scale as they go along.
CT: As this message gets out, are you seeing a change in the kinds of pharmacies that are taking a good look at high-volume solutions?
Noffsinger: Well yes, and that’s one of the exciting things about this. Traditionally, if you’re a retail chain, you might be interested in centrally filling and then distributing out to your retail locations. If you’re mail-order, you might be interested in these high-volume systems because you’re doing a lot of volume and you need to ship to the patient at home efficiently. On the other hand, your traditional independent retailer or the traditional long-term care pharmacy or specialty pharmacy didn’t have the scale and volume that was needed.
But what’s so interesting now is that the modular nature of CentralRx changes all this. So really, we’ve broken out of the traditional space and now we can offer solutions from our CentralRx line to really any pharmacy and for a variety of different packaging formats. CT