Tim Mitchell, owner of Family Pharmacy of Neosho in Neosho, Mo., has used ProfitGuard since the service first launched more than two years ago.
Before using ProfitGuard, Mitchell said he had to figure out how to achieve the best cost of goods for the pharmacy himself. “We were so busy, we didn’t really have time to sit down and do the amount of analyzing that ProfitGuard does for us now,” he said.
This fast-growing service offered by PBA Health combines industry knowledge and experience to get your independent pharmacy the best wholesale contract available. PBA Health negotiates on behalf of independent pharmacies to achieve the best cost of goods for each pharmacy and to help them maintain the highest rebates.
“I know it has saved us probably thousands of dollars over the last year,” Mitchell said.
Saving pharmacies time
Tim Mitchell, R.Ph., owner of Family Pharmacy in Neosho, Mo.
With an average of 400 scripts a day, plus administering daily immunizations and offering medication therapy management services, Mitchell and his staff at Family Pharmacy stay busy.
“ProfitGuard actually enables us to stay focused on what we’re doing as pharmacists instead of having to worry about being inventory managers,” he said. “It helps us actually get more joy out of our job instead of having to worry about if we’re ordering the wrong product.”
Ordering made easy
At the end of the day, usually around 5 p.m., Mitchell starts to work on placing his product order. Because of ProfitGuard’s business intelligence tools, he’s usually done by 6 p.m.—if not earlier. “ProfitGuard really helps streamline that ordering process so we don’t have to spend two to three hours placing an order,” he said.
Mitchell and one of his pharmacy technicians usually go through the pharmacy’s ProfitGuard reports ahead of time and the technician uses ProfitGuard to check to make sure the products they plan to order are the ones that optimize rebates and profitability. Then, when they go to place a purchase order, it’s simple to complete.
“We don’t have to waste time changing things and then ordering things that we shouldn’t be ordering because we’re not getting a rebate on them or we’re not getting the best price on them,” Mitchell said.
Simple managing
ProfitGuard includes a complete set of business intelligence tools to help pharmacies quickly identify purchasing opportunities and easily make adjustments for even greater profitability.
One way ProfitGuard allows pharmacies to optimize their bottom line is by highlighting “preferred products,” so pharmacies know when to switch products to get the best price.
“We’ve been able to switch over to preferred products when we didn’t realize there was another product that was even available,” Mitchell said. “We didn’t look. It actually puts those things in front of us and makes us look at them.”
Over the last year, ProfitGuard has made more than 460,000 favorable recommendations for its members, such as when to switch to a more profitable NDC or a more optimal supplier. These recommendations saved ProfitGuard members more than $7 million last year.
ProfitGuard makes it possible to monitor every single purchase, which ensures that pharmacies are getting the contracted discount rates and generic pricing on every line item of purchase.
No other solution out there can audit every single line item to ensure proper pricing. Last year ProfitGuard pinpointed more than 211,000 incorrect line items and recovered more than $495,000 for its members due to the errors.
Since its launch, ProfitGuard has audited more than 15,000,000 lines of sales data for its members. Without ProfitGuard’s exclusive auditing and analyzing capabilities, pharmacies could be leaving significant money on the table.
“ProfitGuard enables us to identify those opportunities that we may be missing otherwise,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell also likes that ProfitGuard works with his pharmacy system. “Because the preferred drugs on ProfitGuard become the preferred drugs on our pharmacy system, we don’t have to worry about ordering products that we shouldn’t because we would be losing money on them.”
“It keeps us focused on what we need to do as far as patient care,” he said.
