Why it matters for your specialty pharmacy
It’s important to diversify your specialty pharmacy prescription delivery through both major carriers to ensure that critical shipments are delivered quickly, accurately, and safely.
It’s one thing to have your local pharmacy deliver prescriptions to your home. It’s another thing entirely to be counting on a specialty pharmacy that provides very expensive medications for serious healthcare issues that require complex therapies.
If you’re a specialty pharmacy professional, you know just how critical these drugs are, and you know that getting them to the patient requires speed, accuracy, and (frequently) temperature control. With so much at stake, ensuring you have a number of prescription delivery options can ensure your patients get the best possible results.
Carrier, courier, or both? How to choose the right specialty pharmacy prescription delivery option.
For same-day delivery, local courier services can’t be beat. They’re fast, accurate, and frequently expensive. From a bottom-line perspective, they certainly shouldn’t be your first, everyday choice, but when a prescription needs to get to a patient quickly, having a trusted courier or two on your side is a must.
Choosing the right carrier, on the other hand, is the best way to manage costs, with the optimal word being “choosing.” If your freight management team isn’t offering you a choice of carrier, you’re probably not saving money; in fact, you’re probably putting more money into their pockets by paying the hidden markups that come with loyalty to just one carrier.
VPL has always offered choice of carrier and transparent pricing so you always know exactly what you’re paying for shipping and what you’re paying us. In this way, we also help you be less dependent on more expensive couriers since we enable you to choose the carrier that can get the product where it needs to go the fastest or the cheapest.
Greater control leads to better patient outcomes
Whether you choose carrier or courier, what you’re ultimately choosing is the best outcomes for your patients, and by partnering with VPL for your pharmacy shipments, you can count on the following:
- Prescription delivery tracking for staff
Know when it left, where it was left, who signed for it, and how much time it took to get there. We’ll streamline your prescription shipping workflow, enhance your operational efficiency, and prioritize patient safety.
- Delivery alerts for patients
Patients will receive automated text and email alerts regarding delivery status because meds are no good if the patient isn’t home to receive them.
- Centralized access to carriers and couriers
Compare shipping rates and transit times among carriers with the option to filter by price or arrival time.
- Cost transparency and control
You choose the carrier; you control the costs. We’ll show you the fastest and least expensive ways to ship and you make the final selection.
- Simplified audits and accreditation
By providing you with electronic proof of delivery, we ensure compliance during audits and protect against payor clawback. All Proof of Delivery (POD) will be stored securely and readily available to you for up to ten years.
At the end of the day, it's not who, it's how.
Whom you choose—carrier or courier—to deliver your package isn’t necessarily the most important question you need to ask when a prescription needs to be delivered. Instead, the question is “how?”
- How fast does it need to get there?
- How important is speed versus cost for this particular patient?
- How can we ensure we’re doing the best for every patient we serve?
With VPL, these questions are easier to answer, since we give you visibility into all of the “hows” that allow you to select the best “who” for the job.
VPL TrajectRx is specialty pharmacy prescription delivery software that gives pharmacies centralized access to both major carriers and various couriers.
Learn more about TrajectRx and how it’s changing specialty pharmacy for the better at www.getvpl.com/pharmacy-shipping-solutions.
