In this interview with ComputerTalk, Alexander Miguel, Pharm.D., chief operating officer for Transaction Data Systems, explains how a new dashboard gives TDS customers quick access to $1 million worth of revenue opportunities from clinical services.
ComputerTalk: What are a few of the key new features of the clinical opportunity solution?
Alexander Miguel: Opportunities Now is our new clinical opportunity solution and is a dashboard where all of a pharmacy’s aggregated clinical revenue opportunities are in one place. This will allow pharmacists to see all the opportunities in workflow. This platform will bring in opportunities from different clinical services providers as well. For example, we have partnered with OutcomesMTM, and our pharmacies can see all the Outcomes clinical work that is related to their pharmacy, and the patients that go to their pharmacy, in the dashboard. Just from that partnership alone, for example, this month, there are over $1 million in clinical opportunities available to pharmacies across the TDS network.
CT: Which is pretty amazing.
Miguel: Yes! One thing that really differentiates TDS is that we are focused on bringing as much new revenue to our customers and to our partners as possible and making sure that we aggregate it all in one place. We want to drive the most value possible from one dashboard. So, whether it’s a clinical or pharma program that we have partnered directly with, through our partnership with Outcomes, or through a medical billing partnership, everything we’re doing is in one place for our customers.
CT: That’s important, because in the past the pharmacist would have had to find those opportunities on their own.
Miguel: Not only is it consolidated in one place, they can also sort it by highest revenue opportunity to lowest. There are filters where they can sort by the type of work, such as an adherence intervention or a vaccine, or the patient’s next refill date to time the clinical work with the expected presence of the patient in the pharmacy.
CT: We think it‘s important — to be able to communicate with customers as far as making them aware that a clinical opportunity exists.
Miguel: Absolutely. For example, there are over a hundred million vaccine opportunities across our network. Timing those vaccines with the patients coming in for refills is critical to being able to deliver them. With Opportunities Now, the pharmacist can see when that next refill is and what vaccines that patient may be eligible for, all in one place.
CT: We want to ask about documentation and communication. Not only is the opportunity streamlined, but it seems that a big part of this is being able to document and share that information.
Miguel: With Opportunities Now, pharmacies can document the work that they’re doing within that window. They can click into the alert or the clinical opportunity that’s being presented and document that it was completed. That produces a data file that’s sent back to the sponsor who’s paying for the work.
CT: The advantage is having everything in one place and not having to piece it together.
Miguel: I think that it is unique not only that all the information is in one place, but also that the aggregation makes it easy for the pharmacy to implement as a daily part of its practice. There are not just one or two interventions, which might feel like it’s a waste of time to go in and do the work. There are a lot of interventions per pharmacy. And that should hopefully give the pharmacist the operational leverage that they need to make this part of their everyday procedures.
CT: What else are you excited about with this?
Miguel: What’s exciting is having the most aggregated volume of opportunities in the market by far. The next step for us is to have this integrated into our pharmacy management system. That will allow for that streamlined workflow I was referring to, which means when an Rx30 or Computer-Rx user pulls up a patient’s profile, he or she will be able to see the clinical interventions that are an opportunity now. Within the PMS workflow, pharmacists can click on and do all the documentation they need. That way, when a patient walks in, not only is the pharmacist looking at their drug profile, but they are also looking at the clinical service profile.
CT: This reinforces the long-time effort to get pharmacists out from behind the counter.
Miguel: The idea is, again, shifting that practice of pharmacy toward a clinical-first pharmacy. Being a clinical-first pharmacy management system provider, we realize that’s a long way away. There’s still a lot of dispensing activity that a pharmacy must do, and it’s the core of their business, but the transformation has to start somewhere. And we really believe that it starts here at TDS. CT