Price Transparency Tool Gives Gift of Time, Savings to Pharmacists and Patients

Priyank Patel's New York City-area pharmacies have only had access to a prescription price transparency tool for a short period of time, but his pharmacists have already seen a big impact.

Priyank recently shared the success of his new PrimeRx^TM pharmacy management system's interface with Surescripts Real-Time Prescription Benefit on the Pharmacy Podcast Network's (PPN) Micro Merchant Systems (MMS) podcast series. Brian Courtney, Pharm. D., MMS Chief Revenue Officer, and Heather Martin, Surescripts director of pharmacy sales, also joined to share what pharmacists' workflows looked like before and after they started using this tool.

"I would say that pharmacists' daily workflow was broken," explained Heather. "Pharmacists were really forced to operate in the dark until a prescription was adjudicated with the payer."

Priyank agreed. "The two biggest challenges we face as retail pharmacists is ensuring patient compliance and getting prescriptions out in a timely manner. Before Real-Time Prescription Benefit, we would sometimes have to tell customers that their prescriptions were not covered, call their doctor to get coverage information and figure out which medications are covered. In the meantime, the customer would go home, forget about their prescription, and never come back to the pharmacy to pick up the medication that they were supposed to be taking."

Now, in a matter of months with Real-Time Prescription Benefit, not only has this time-consuming process been cut in half, but patients have become more adherent to their medication. Priyank can point to his pharmacies' 15% decline in return to stock prescriptions. "We're now able to figure out what medications are on formula and what medications are covered before customers even walk into the pharmacy," he shared.

Heather also began to imagine what pharmacists and customers could do with this time back. "Now customers might have time to schedule a vaccination or for a conversation about other medications that have been prescribed."

Looking ahead, Brian shared, "I really think this is going to change the way pharmacists interact with prescriptions that come into the pharmacy.”