Introduction
The pressure is on for specialty pharmacies to manage costs.
Controlling costs has always been a critical component of specialty pharmacy business strategy. However, as one of our pharmacy partners recently put it, “Money is of utmost importance right now, and pharmacy is under incredible scrutiny.”
The need for cost savings is all the more apparent with inflation and other challenges in 2024. These include the ever-rising price of specialty medications, operational and labor costs, and maintaining healthy margins with limited 340B benefits.
As the experts in pharmacy distribution, it’s our job to uncover cost savings wherever they’re found in your shipping program. In our domain, there are three key areas that specialty pharmacies can address to control distribution costs. These are shipping spend, manual invoicing, and distribution errors.
In this week’s article, we cover each of these areas where specialty pharmacies are missing out on critical savings opportunities. Next, we explain how pharmacies can take advantage of these opportunities with our modern pharmacy logistics solution.
Three opportunities for cost savings in specialty pharmacy
1. Uncontrolled shipping spend
Specialty pharmacies with generic shipping software and/or limited carrier and courier networks can reign in their shipping spend by investing in a clinically-minded shipping solution instead.
If you’re still relying on generic shipping software to deliver your patients’ medications, upgrading can be a worthwhile investment that saves your pharmacy team time by reducing the number of logins, manual data entry, and therefore costly shipping errors.
Working with multiple carriers and couriers also helps you get the best rates available. Competitive rates are critical to reducing your shipping spend. This is especially true for health system specialty pharmacies that ship hundreds or even thousands of medications daily.
Pharmacy teams can control their shipping spend and spend less time entering shipment data manually with our automated shipping workflow and custom integrations with Epic Willow, PioneerRx, Asembia-1, ScriptPro, and others.
Our customers get the best rates and delivery times with their carrier of choice, including UPS, FedEx, USPS, and national and local couriers. Once their shipment is on its way, pharmacy teams receive automated notifications so they always know exactly where it is.
2. Manual data tracking and reporting
Keeping track of all the data your pharmacy produces can be a very time-consuming and error-prone process. In specialty pharmacy, accurate reporting is critical to safeguard patients, protect against payor clawbacks, and maintain accreditation.
That said, the ability to automatically track and visualize all this information can boost efficiency. In addition, centralizing this data can help identify areas for improvement in distribution accuracy and other key metrics. All of this ultimately saves your pharmacy team more time, prevents costly errors, and uncovers opportunities for additional savings.
Our compliance-focused data visualization and analytics centralizes your information and automates reporting. We help pharmacy teams track shipping data trends to control costs, compare carrier and courier performance, and export these metrics for auditing and accreditation compliance.
We also store proof of delivery for up to 10 years, providing your pharmacy team with ready access to the data you need to demonstrate distribution accuracy and maintain compliance with accreditation standards.
3. Distribution errors
Many specialty pharmacies have no visibility into their shipments once they’re out the door. Without this insight, many pharmacies are dedicating a significant number of resources to reshipping medications that fail to be delivered.
With the average specialty medication costing more than $84,000 annually, distribution errors and reshipments can be incredibly costly. In fact, specialty pharmacies spend millions each year just to rescue or reship lost packages.
These last-mile shipping errors can be more easily prevented with close monitoring and proactive intervention. In the ideal scenario, pharmacies are able to identify and rescue missed shipments before it’s too late.
Our team sees your shipments through the last mile and directly to patient’s doorsteps. We offer proactive monitoring and intervention to help you deliver prescriptions safely and cost-efficiently.
Our customer success team extends your visibility into the last mile with root-cause analysis for distribution errors, proactive package monitoring, and targeted carrier interventions when necessary. We can arrange new courier and carrier contracts to boost your efficiency and introduce complementary partnerships for cold chain shipments.
Conclusion
The spotlight is on pharmacies to bring down costs. Fortunately, there’s plenty of opportunity to do so by modernizing prescription shipping processes and last-mile delivery. Without this focus, the industry’s distribution costs will continue adding up to millions annually as a result of outdated shipping processes, distribution errors, and other inefficiencies.
Reigning in shipping spend with a clinically minded solution like VPL Rx is a great place to start. A tailored solution that integrates with pharmacies’ existing workflows can save time for your pharmacy teams, prevent costly shipping errors, and support patient safety by maintaining compliance. You can request a demo here.
About VPL Rx
VPL Rx is a clinically minded shipping, tracking, and compliance solution designed to modernize pharmacy distribution and promote healthier patients. Our quicker shipping workflow delivers prescriptions safely with real-time tracking, delivery alerts, and last-mile intervention. Exportable performance reporting and data analytics help pharmacies optimize costs and maintain compliance and accreditation.
