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The Unscripted Blog by Ben Coakley looks at the lighter side of pharmacy ownership.  By sharing humorous stories, pharmacy jokes and other whacky tales, we hope to bring a smile to your day and a little more joy to your work. If you have any humorous stories or jokes you would like to share with your fellow pharmacy owners, please submit them here. riley@waypointus.com

The High Cost of Convenience for Pharmacy Patients

Posted by Benjamin Coakley on Aug 16, 2017 7:47:51 AM

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Welcome to today's edition of Waypoint Unscripted. This is Ben Coakley with Waypoint RX. I am so glad you're here. Today's topic is going to be the high cost of convenience. This was inspired by the story of my grandfather, and his switch to mail order many many years ago, which ultimately cost him his life, and cost my family many years without him being present with us.


I want to thank Ken and Donna Rogers at Stone Plaza Pharmacy for inspiring me to write this. I shared that story with my grandfather, and he said, "More people need to hear this story, and what the high cost of convenience is". I actually surveyed some of my friends on Facebook. I have about 1500 friends. Those people are not actual friends of mine, but they're people I meet across the country. I tell the story of community pharmacy, and they always want to keep abreast of what's going on. I just tell them to follow me on Facebook, or go follow me on Twitter. That's how they can keep abreast of what's going on in this industry.


Over the years I've accumulated about 1500 people on there. It's a good subsection of America, because I've got people on the west coast, east coast, mid west, south west. Old people. Young people. Workers. Retirees. People who are going to college. It doesn't matter. I will tell the story of pharmacy to anybody, and if anybody wants to follow that I'll get them and connect with them on Facebook or Twitter.


I shared with them a question. The question was, "Why do you choose to shop at the pharmacy that you use currently?". I got three main answers back. The most common answer was, "It's convenient for me. It's on the corner. It's on my way home. It's open 24 hours. It's got locations in different cities, so if I travel I can go get something if I forget my scripts".


The second answer was, "My insurance company requires me or encourages me to use their preferred pharmacy". Then finally the third answer is, "I love my pharmacy. I love my pharmacist". I'm assuming all those are the ones who use independents. But it's amazing that that was the third most popular choice out of the people who responded to the question.


I then sent a followup question for those who answered me back. I said, "For those who answered, how many of you use multiple pharmacies?". Almost all, 90 percent of them said, "I use multiple pharmacies". I asked why, and a couple people said, "I shop for price". What's amazing is, we're out there beating our chests saying, "We've got the best service. People love us the best. We have the relationship with our people. That's what people care about", when in actuality, the American public might actually shop on convenience and price more than their relationship. A recent survey came out that I read, that confirmed that the average person in America uses three pharmacies to get their scripts filled.
If they're looking for convenience and they're shopping on price, and we're trying to compete on convenience and price, and I asked pharmacy owners, "Can you actually compete on that?", and they tell me, "No", then maybe we're competing on the wrong things. I asked owners, "What can you compete on?". They said, "We deliver the best care". That's where this blog truly comes in. With my grandfather, it was all about the cost of care for him. By using that mail order pharmacy, there was no continuity of care between all his doctors and his pharmacy. That ultimately resulted in some things being missed in the process, that I think ended up costing him his life.


We've actually identified, there's three primary costs of convenience, of using that mail order pharmacy or shopping on price or using that pharmacy based on convenience rather than care. Obviously the first one is care. People don't realize all the things that go into being a pharmacist. I have a wife who's in pharmacy school, so I now understand the full training that pharmacists get when they're going through school. I asked Samantha one time, "Why do you need all this training?". She said, "Ben. We're the last stop. We're the last cog in the wheel. If we don't do our job, and something gets missed through the entire healthcare industry, we have to catch that. This is something people are putting in their bodies to get healthy. We'd better know what we're talking about". I said, "You know what? I agree with that".


The cost of care is really important, and having continuity of care. I was reading a bog the other day. It was talking about the future of pharmacy. It was talking about point of care testing. Pharma-code genomics. The pressure that's being put on medicare and insurance companies to identify disease states before they actually arise now, they're going to start shifting some payments for those types of things. That actually can become a huge revenue source for pharmacies. That is all stuff that can be done, that continuity of care and identifying these things before they ever come up. That can be best handled at your pharmacy. An independently owned community drug store.


The second cost is what I call the cost of time. The cost of not having time and energy for the important things in life. When I was talking to one lady one time, and I was actually in one of my client's pharmacies, she said, "I go to Wal Mart. But I come here to get this, and I go to another drug store to get this". I said, "How much time does it take you?". She said, "Well, I'm in pharmacies seven, eight, nine times a month just to get the stuff I need".


I said, "30 minutes time 10, let's say. That's 300 minutes. That's five hours a month that you'll never get back, that you could be spending with your kids, with your grandkids. If you like to fish or hunt you can do that. If you like to travel you can do that. If you'd like to go to a movie twice a month. You can do all that, but no, you're instead driving around trying to find cost effective prescriptions and all those kinds of things. What's it truly costing you? How much is time with your grandkids or time doing those important things really worth?".


Then finally, the third cost that we've identified is what I call the cost of resources. How much gas, how much wear and tear are you putting on your car? To go travel around. If you're spending three, four, five gallons a month of gas, and an oil change every three months because it's extra driving, or every six months, that adds up. Your per prescription cost, instead of four dollars, goes up to seven, eight, nine, 10 dollars. Now getting it from the independent doesn't seem so bad, because you don't have to drive and put all the wear and tear and stuff.


What's amazing is, when I talk to people about that, they don't think that way. I think as business owners, as pharmacy owners, we're trained to think that way. We look at the true cost of things. Cost of time, energy, resources, opportunity cost. We look at all those things, and we understand that. But the American public has no idea what all that means. They just see four dollars, "Oh. I saved four bucks". They have no idea that driving around all that takes a year off the life of their car. They're going to have to buy a new car. It's up to us to really help them think through those things.


We're actually coming up with a new tool called the Cost of Conv ... This calculator will allow you to work with your patients, to help them understand what the true cost of convenience is. You can share with them the story of my grandfather, and ask them what the cost of care potentially could be for a family member of a loved one if these things aren't caught and identified before they happen. Then you can actually calculate what the cost of their time is. Then you can actually calculate the cost of resources. You can help paint a picture of what their per prescription costs are based on the convenience, and having to drive around and do those things in order to get those prescriptions filled.
Please feel free to use this with all your patients, and have them give this to their family members. We think it's a great way to grow your business, and we thing it's going to be a great fit for Med Sync programs as well, to get people to use Med Sync. Because they're going to truly understand what the cost of going to these different drug stores and shopping based on convenience would be.
I appreciate your time today. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me. Ben@WaypointUS.com. Or call me at 843-873-4420, extension 13. I really do appreciate you guys listening.

Topics: community pharmacy, community pharmacy owner, cost of convenience