If a specialty isn’t in your pharmacy’s future plan, you might want to reconsider.
Specialty pharmacy is already a large market, and, according to the National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA), specialty pharmaceuticals account for one-third of pharmacy business.
This segment is also poised to become more important for independent community pharmacies. Physicians and payers are becoming more inclined to send patients to pharmacies that deliver better patient outcomes. This means independent community pharmacies will face an increasingly competitive and crowded specialty market.
In order to keep up with the competition, independents need to incorporate specialty into their businesses. To help pharmacies do that, NCPA recently hosted a seminar, “NCPA Specialty Forum – Exploring the Intersection of Specialty Medications, Community Pharmacy and Patient Care.”
Here are four factors NCPA’s seminar identified to help you create a successful specialty program in your independent pharmacy.
1. Clinical value
If you provide specialty services, it’s important to offer patients clinical value that can’t be found at your competitors. This means you have to turn a standard transaction, like dispensing medication, into an experience that adds clinical value. For example, providing counseling that leads to improved adherence, or adjusting medication to improve disease-state specific outcomes.
2. Mutual benefit
Specialty programs should benefit all parties involved—the patient, your pharmacy, and payers. Ideally, the patient will have better health, the payer will save money on comorbidities and complications, and your pharmacy will benefit from more business and reimbursement for your services.
3. Relationships
In order for your specialty program to succeed, you need to leverage relationships with local providers. Use the relationships you already have with physicians in your area to identify areas of need.
Start by identifying how you can help area physicians. Do they need someone to provide newly diagnosed patients with diabetes with nutrition counseling, or perhaps they need someone to help educate and treat a growing population with HIV?
Find their area of need and work to create a specialty space to address it. As you help patients—and make their jobs easier—they’ll send more patients your way, which will help expand your specialty business.
4. Data
Data should drive your specialty business. Start by researching your area to determine what disease states your specialty services should focus on. There are several resources you can use to learn about the common health concerns in your area. Use these to guide you as you select what specialty disease states to target.
Data is essential once you implement a specialty program, too. Keep track of how much specialty business your pharmacy does, and use this data to determine if your specialty offerings are working, or if they need to be adjusted.
Specialty is a key part of the future of successful independent pharmacies. Use these considerations to guide you as you decide how to implement a specialty program at your pharmacy.
Learn more about NCPA’s seminar here.
