Pharmacy revenue can be anywhere between 10 and 50% of a federally qualified health center's annual budget. Looking for ways to increase the volume of scripts filled and customers served should always be top of mind for a the CEO of a health center.
Here are a few strategies to increase revenue from your pharmacy.
Open to All: Your pharmacy should be available for anyone to use, not just your patients. This requires that you keep the 340b inventory separate from the retail inventory, but it is a way to make more pharmacy revenue and get people utilizing one of the health center's services, which means they'll probably use your other services.
Bill insurance: Secure contracts with the major payers in your area to attract the insured customers.
Competitive Advantage: If your pharmacy is in an area where there are a lot of commercial pharmacies, you need to offer services that your competitors are not offering. At the health center where I was the CEO, we offered delivery of medications within 20 miles of the pharmacy. We also had curbside pickup, texting refills, clinical pharmacists, and Saturday hours, mail-order prescriptions, and those services gave us a competitive advantage.
More signage: Often times your patients don't realize you have a pharmacy. Post signs in exam and waiting rooms that say "These pharmacies support the mission of your community health center" and list the health center's in-house and contract pharmacies.
Change the script (pun intended 😉): Instead of providers asking patients where to send the prescription, have them say "can I send this to our onsite pharmacy?" The provider can then tell them the benefits of filling at the pharmacy (discounted medications, filled at the time of the appt, excellent customer service, clinical pharmacist for extended consultation), and the patient will more than likely be willing to send it to your pharmacy.
Pharmacies have lots of competition these days, so be intentional about standing out and increasing the volume of business that your pharmacy does, and increasing the revenue.
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