I met Mark Vogler, R.Ph. in the spring of 2016 as part of
one of my many pharmacy road trips. I
was impressed with what a passionate clinician and astute businessman he was
back then. I just got of the phone with
him, and am even more impressed as he shared with me why he had invested in a
pick-to-light will-call management system.
Vogler is the owner of Martin-Tipton Pharmacy in Amarillo,
TX. It is a high-volume pharmacy, doing
about twice as many prescriptions per day as the national average. Much of this is due to Vogler being the type
of guy who goes out and looks for better ways to meet the medication needs of
his community. In addition to
traditional dispensing the pharmacy works with mental health clinics, assisted
living facilities and provides medication services to an AIDS support
group.
But what brought us together was a conversation on why he
had recently invested thousands of dollars in the scripClip™
LED supported will-call system. Here is
his short answer, “I was tired of looking unprofessional when patients came in
for their scripts and we couldn’t immediately find them.”
And here is what blew me away. I asked how often that happened and he said,
about 2 or 3 times a week. That number
jumped out at me as being low compared to other pharmacies I have interviewed
on behalf of PerceptiMed, the company that developed scripClip. I had done a survey for the company a couple
months earlier and spoke with pharmacists who told me they had trouble finding
scripts “a couple times a day” and didn’t seem to think it was anything to worry
about.
It got a bit more interesting when he talked about being in
an ethnically diverse part of town and the complications that come from hard to
pronounce and spell names. He told me
how his staff works hard to place filled scrips in alphabetical order but that
just doesn’t always seem to work. Now he
says, with the pick-to-light system they simply put filled prescriptions on the
will-call rack randomly. Then they retrieve them by asking patients for their
birthdate and entering that into the POS.
The result, the right bag lights up and is retrieved quickly.
Vogler says the system works exceptionally well, and he is
pleased with the fact that it does exactly what he expected when he purchased it. But then he adds, since installing the system
he has found that it pays for itself in an unanticipated way.
Vogler says the process of identify the precise bag for a
person who has not picked up a filled script is much easier with
scripClip. Vogler says that by asking
the system to “light-up” scripts filled but not picked up after 5 days his
staff can simply walk the will-call area and retrieve those scripts. Then they call – yes, they make a personal
phone call – to those people, find out what the issue is and encourage them to
come get their medicine.
He says the personal call, done by staff members with access
to a patient’s full profile helps him provide exceptional customer service. Then he says, they repeat the process at 10
days and return items to stock and reverse third-party claims. Being able to perform both tasks so quickly
has helped reduce abandoned scrips and improve inventory turns and cash-flow. He says scripClip has allowed him to reduce
the number of bags in his will-call bin from 400 to 300. These two metrics alone, he says, more than justify
the cost of the system.
Finally, he says, “The flashing lights just look nice.”
