Who’s Delivering What Where?

Finding the perfect ratio of carrier to courier is especially relevant for specialty pharmacies.

In any business, finding the right mix of delivery services is a balancing act that can be dependent on the time of year, geographic factors, budget, and workflow. This is especially true for specialty pharmacy home delivery.

In a perfect world, pharmacists could make all refill calls well in advance, work with incredibly responsive patients, and have all deliveries scheduled with couriers days ahead of time in order to save money and increase delivery performance. But this isn’t a perfect world.

Too often, pharmacies don’t have the luxury of scheduling in advance when same-day and next-day deliveries are their reality. Sometimes, it’s necessary to spend extra on cold chain or when shipping to zip codes where packages have high delivery-fail rates. In cases like these, pharmacists not only have to take into account what is in the box (is it expensive? unstable? critically needed?), but they must also determine how to best get the box to the patient, in the most cost-conscious manner possible. This type of hedging between cost-containment and optimized patient care is not an easy task, and some specialty pharmacists face this challenge every single day.

So, what’s the answer?

Technology.

If pharmacists can go to one digital solution to find the data they need to make the right choice for every single shipment, they can provide their patients with peace of mind and better outcomes.

In our December 27, 2022 blog, Critical Issues Affecting Today’s Specialty Pharmacies, Part 4, we discussed the importance of using technology-based solutions like VPL TrajectRx to get a better handle on packaging monitoring, patient communication, automated invoicing, package rescue, and choice of carrier. Even though we know couriers tend to make fewer errors than major carriers, when speed is critical, knowing which carrier can get what where when the patient needs it can help pharmacists make smart choices when getting packages out the door—especially critical since we know more errors are made in the distribution of prescriptions than the dispensing of them (URAC reported 5 times as many in 2022).

VPL TrajectRx was built for pharmacists by pharmacists and gives pharmacies everything they need in one clinically-minded solution. By seeing every choice in one convenient, pharmacists can find their ideal ratio of carrier to courier and enjoy easier shipping, greater visibility into shipments, increased compliance, and fewer delivery failures.

To learn more about how VPL TrajectRx helps specialty pharmacies with home delivery, visit getvpl.com/pharmacy-solutions.