Picking a pharmacy consultant for your independent pharmacy gives you access to many tools that you may not otherwise know or have access to. HVRS Solutions has many tools to offer you on top of years of experience. Keep reading to see all we can do to help!
Accreditation assures your patients that you have met certain standards and can provide consistently high-quality care. Not to mention that insurance companies may require at least one, sometimes two, accreditations to enter into their network. Applying for board accreditation can be daunting, tedious, and overwhelming. The entire process can take up to a year, from start to finish. Consider securing your investment with our accreditation preparation services.
Certifications: The following programs aren't accreditations but can be categorized as certifications.
Are your pharmacy departments optimized for cost savings and overhead reduction? An organizational development strategy can help you to install invaluable programs to realize operational optimization and cost reductions in the following areas:
Staff Orientation / Training (decreased turnover)
Medication Billing / Error Prevention Techniques
Complaints / Customer Service (complaints cost money!)
Cold Chain Distribution (maintaining temperature integrity while shipping prescriptions to patients)
Orientation / Training
The average cost of replacing an entry-level employee is about 30-50% of the salary, meaning that a pharmacy technician making $12 an hour would equal a cost of $7,500 to $12,500 to replace.
Sixty-four percent of retail new hires (pharmacy technicians included) leave within their first year, 40% within six months.
HR Magazine says companies that invest in training can see an average of 24% more profit due to employee commitment, productivity, and accuracy.
A study done by ATD says companies that offer thorough training had two times the amount of income per employee.
Many studies have proven that effectively training new hires will decrease the turnover rate of the organization.
Medication Error / Billing Error Prevention
The overall dispensing accuracy rate of any community pharmacy is 98.3% without a continuous quality improvement (CQI) program in place. A 98.3% accuracy rate may look pretty good, but let’s look at some numbers.
The average prescription mix of a pharmacy is 89% generic, 9% brand, and 2% specialty.
Average generic drug costs $26, average brand $308, and average specialty is a whopping $4,373. These are 2017 figures.
This means that a pharmacy that fills 100 scripts a day would see about 408 medication errors a year totaling $55,818 throughout the course of a year!
This number accounts for medication and billing errors, which are preventable. This does not include costs associated with adverse events experienced by patients, which are not always preventable.
Med error reduction strategies are another program that a pharmacy would expect to implement in organizational development.
Complaints / Customer Service
Ninety-five percent of customers share bad experiences with others, 54% share with five or more people, and 45% share their bad experiences on social media. Eighty-eight percent of customers trust online reviews as much as they trust their friends (consider how often you check online reviews when purchasing a product online).
A single negative online review costs a company an average loss of 30 customers!
By using the figures and drug costs from the last bullet point, we can calculate that losing 30 customers equates to $124,488 per year!
By analyzing the root cause of customer complaints using tools learned here, a pharmacy can avoid this extremely costly mistake.
Cold Chain Distribution Channel
This term describes maintaining temperature controls and manufacturer stability recommendations while mailing prescriptions to patients’ homes.
Specialty prescriptions are more commonly shipped to the patient due to the nature of the disease state being treated. For example, multiple sclerosis patients may be wheelchair-bound and not as mobile as other patients and may request his/her medication to be shipped to their mailbox to make it easier for the patient.
Specialty medications also require special handling requirements, such as narrow temperature ranges. During hot summer months, these prescriptions are easily damaged due to extreme temperatures. The same goes for cold winter months and snowstorms.
Plain and simple. With an average cost of $4,373 for one specialty prescription, having to replace just one of these per quarter would mean $17,492 a year.
It would be much cheaper to insure your cold chain channel with programs recommended here. Especially considering how completely avoidable this extra cost is.
Our pharmacy savings program gives millions of cardholders free access to discounts on thousands of FDA-approved prescription medications. We do this by partnering and negotiating savings with 67,000+ pharmacies nationwide and pass savings directly on to the cardholder.
Our focus is to continue finding ways to negotiate deeper discounts with pharmacies, so all cardholders can afford the medications they need!
We provide a secure, collaborative online platform that allows patients, physicians, and pharmacists to work together to improve patient’s access to treatment and deliver medicine faster. Truly a one-stop solution for prior authorization.
Prior Authorization
Say goodbye to manual prior authorizations forever. Our integrated solutions are designed to relieve administrative burden so clinicians and staff can focus time where it matters most—quality patient care.
Appeals and Letters of Medical Necessity
The effectiveness of an appeal/medical necessity letter can be greatly enhanced if a clinician understands the legal issues involved. Let our team of experts generate your letters to optimize cash flow and get your patients what they need.
Patient Assistance
We strive to provide an equal level of care for all patients. Our patient assistance platform allows us to research, qualify, and maintain patients’ enrollment in all sources of assistance available to them.
There are many resources available to purchase “stock” standard operating procedures. The problem with these blank templates is that you or another staff member must go through each and every one of the policies to fill in the blank. That’s great if you have the time and patience to do this. HVRS Solutions can provide these “stock” templates to you if that’s what you are looking for.
We also provide another option where we develop these standard operating procedures for you (with you). Working side by side with one of our senior consultants, HVRS Solutions can get a feel for your pharmacy operations and complete personalized policies and procedures that are specific to your pharmacy.
The decision is yours to make!
Two options:
Types of SOPs:
General new pharmacy state compliant
Nonsterile compounding
LTC long term care
Central fill arrangements
Clinical programs (vaccinations, MTM, point-of-care testing)
SOPs for HR, orientation, or training staff
Investigational/research pharmacy
SOPs for several accreditations
SOPs to respond to audits/DEA
Our vision for our 340B division is simple. We strive to implement and assist in any and all 340B-related matters in order to improve the lives of indigent populations and the healthcare providers that serve them.
The federal government’s 340B program is designed to promote access to affordable medications for the most vulnerable or underserved patient populations while helping to stretch federal resources. This program mandates that drug manufacturers must provide outpatient drugs at greatly discounted prices to certain qualifying hospitals and healthcare organizations. Today, more than one-third of all hospitals nationwide participate in the 340B program and benefit from these drug discounts. It is estimated that 95% of all marketed drugs have 340B discounts associated with them, and the average savings is approximately 25–50% off wholesale pricing.
Specialty drugs are an important area for 340B programs, as these therapies tend to be higher in cost, and the market for specialty medications is growing rapidly. As a result, we frequently collaborate with qualified 340B hospitals and healthcare organizations, providing access to more affordable drugs while maintaining our unwavering focus on clinical excellence, patient education, and premier service.
BREAKING NEWS REGARDING THE 340B PROGRAM: 340B Program Faces Big Pharma Attacks, HRSA Inaction
HVRS Solutions provides pharmacies with audit prevention techniques that reduce the number of remuneration dollars that PBMs try to recoup from you by up to 90%.
In between monthly phone calls with our team and yours, we perform in-depth reviews into your pharmacy's processes, policies and procedures, and other records. Feel confident with our high-touch model of support and guidance to respond to PBM audits and techniques to prevent audits from happening.
If you’re anything like us, you have licenses you have to renew, along with a myriad of other certifications, registrations, insurance policies, leases, PBM Credentialing, and so on. It can be difficult to keep track of all these things and also costly to reinstate if something were to lapse.
HVRS Solutions has proprietary systems to manage all the intricacies of pharmacy licensing, and we can take this off of your plate so that you can focus on what you do best: patient care.
Sign up with our ComplianceAMS (Compliance Account Management Solution) today, and never miss another renewal again.
You’ll receive your own dedicated Account Manager where HVRS can either completely take care of your renewals for you or simply remind you when something is due. This program is available for accreditations too where sometimes accreditation standards can be complicated, complex, and time-consuming.
Historically, PBMs are considered “the enemy” when it comes to the world of pharmacy. It makes sense, seeing as how the pharmacy benefit managers are often a barrier to timely patient care. Whether the medication is not covered, it needs prior authorization, or maybe step therapy.
What If There Was a Different Way?
Independent pharmacies are seeing large decreases in reimbursements from insurance, and Specialty independent pharmacy is no better. Specialty medications are generally more costly (oral Hepatitis C medications can cost upwards of $30,000 for one month’s supply) and often have special handling or administration requirements, such as injectables or infusions. Specialty pharmacies face hurdles like negative reimbursements, PBM “lockouts,” and limited distribution drug constraints.
PBM lockouts occur when a pharmacy attempts to fill a specialty medication and sees “Must fill at a network specialty pharmacy” on the rejection screen of the computer. Limited distribution drugs are prescription products that are only accessible from a handful of specialty pharmacies so the manufacturing company can have more oversight and control.
What’s even more frustrating is that sometimes these specialty pharmacies have a relationship with a nearby health system, and the pharmacy may not be able to service the employees of that health system due to one or more of these restrictions.
The Current (Antiquated) Model Is As Follows
A health system contracts with a PBM to administer its health plan and process medical and pharmacy claims. The PBM acts as a middleman between the health system (or hospital) and the pharmacy. The PBM also charges the health system an exorbitant amount of fees to handle this business.
This PBM is called the “spread.” The worst part is that the PBM reimburses the pharmacy a different (much less) amount than they charge the health system for the same drug! PBMs are very secretive about these charges and are accused of not being transparent.
None of these practices benefit our patients and provide for a higher quality standard of care.
Cut out the middleman and maintain your hard-earned affiliations. Even make new ones with this new model. Enter into a network where limited distribution drugs and specialty rejection lockouts are nonexistent. Our model removes the PBM middleman and aligns health systems and independent pharmacies to serve patient populations while removing the shell game that gets in the way of the independent pharmacy’s success. Referral centers can then work with independent pharmacies in their community and return the pharmacy to where it belongs, keeping dollars at home as opposed to sending them to big-box chain pharmacies.
Want to open a pharmacy but don’t know where to start? Maybe you are looking to open an additional pharmacy and you are just too busy to focus your time away from your existing responsibilities. HVRS Solutions is here for you!
Our experienced staff has been involved in the openings of several new pharmacies from start to finish and can assist you in almost any project you are thinking about.
Our flexible rates include simple project fees, total program packages, and even hourly rates.
Chronic care management is recognized by CMS as a critical component of primary care that contributes to better health and care for individuals and is therefore reimbursed by many insurance plans for the pharmacist to perform.
Other forms of remote patient monitoring (RPM) exist and are also reimbursable. There’s transitional care management, pain assessments, and diabetes management. Our program can walk you through all of the possibilities and then show you how to implement each encounter at your pharmacy.
CMS defines CCM as the care coordination that is outside of the regular office visit for patients with multiple (two or more) chronic conditions expected to last at least 12 months or until the death of the patient and that place the patient at significant risk of death, acute exacerbation or decompensation, or functional decline. It can be delivered to people with many different types of health conditions.
Knowing this, you probably have many patients that would fall into this category.
Our program includes:
Policies and procedures for each service
Booklet for everyday use: CPT codes, requirements, eligibility, talking points
Example physician pitches
Several templates
Workflows
FAQ sheets
Marketing sheets
Patient scripts
And much more!
Big box retailers and large chain pharmacies have already caught onto this trend, but many independent pharmacies continue to lag behind. According to the NCPA, just 61% of the community pharmacies offer immunizations. This number can include any range of vaccines, from a single flu shot to a full disease state management program.
Experts recommend that independent pharmacies just beginning to offer immunizations should start with influenza and pneumococcal vaccines. Once you’ve established a consistent program and have begun to generate business, you can consider expanding their offerings to include vaccines recommended by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
Benefits to the Pharmacy
Increase revenue by expanding your clinical services
Position your pharmacy as a local resource for healthcare services
Attract new patients to your pharmacy and grow your business
Strengthen prescriber relationships in your community
Our Services
The Vaccine Program is designed to allow any independent pharmacy to administer vaccines at their licensed establishment any time under our Medical Director. The cost is $297 for 12 months, and you can sign up for your pharmacy today by completing this form.
Protocols included:
Hepatitis A
Hepatitis B
HPV
Influenza
Influenza Type B
Meningococcal
MMR
COVID (Moderna and Pfizer)
Pneumococcal
Emergency reaction
TDAP
Varicella
Zoster
Other Materials Included:
All VISs
Prescription template
Which Vaccines Do I Need?
Using Standing Orders handout
Screening checklist
30 Steps to Implementing handout
Vaccine information statement (general)
Vaccine information table
Service Offerings
Our services are designed to enhance your pharmacy operations while streamlining your day-to-day and making your life easier.
Our Commitment
We want to take the time to learn about your goals and plans for your pharmacy. Tell us about your pharmacy, and we promise to work with you to develop a personalized strategy that is right for you.
Next Steps . . .
Give us a call today at 484–775–8711, or email us to inquire about our services or to request a service you don’t see listed here.