Predict Your Patients’ Future

I can predict the future. Allow me to make a prediction.

There will come a time in the not so distant future where your pharmacy telephone will ring, you will stop what you are doing and take a request to refill someone’s medication. While this is not an Earth-shattering, Nobel prize-worthy premonition for the pharmacy industry, imagine how often that simple transaction occurs. Recognizing predictability this is something you can leverage.

Pharmacy leaders appreciate that some percentage of their Rx count is predictable and the rest is unpredictable. The leverage comes in pushing the scale toward the predictable side (see below).

Dispensaries with high unpredictable Rx counts are reactively pulled in various directions and end up being inefficient, more error-prone, have less time for training and less time for deep patient interventions. Recognizing that the walk-in-clinic Rxs, antibiotics and hospital discharges will not go away, the power is optimizing the Rx count you can control. The compliance packaging, med synchronized refills, called-in ahead work can be fine-tuned to complete when you are less busy.

It changes the urgent work into non-urgent work, opening the door to more meaningful patient interactions, maximized clinical services, more seamless staff development and as a by-product, better business models.