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(Listen To A Managed Healthcare Associates (MHA) webinar about Medication Profit Drain)
There is a high probability that your long-term care pharmacy’s medication management processes could be draining your profits. After employees, the biggest expense for LTC pharmacies is their medication stock. Instead of protecting this most valuable asset, too many pharmacies turn an unknowing or blind eye to the common causes of profit-drain.
Let’s take a bold look at five areas to better manage drug costs and eliminate money-wasting processes. You don’t need a forensic accountant – you just need the facts on the value of innovative technology designed specifically to address your core concerns.
89% of LTC pharmacies we surveyed are concerned about drug diversion at the facility. Opioid abuse statistics are staggering. And what about theft of non-controlled meds? It is often a crime of convenience to save a staff member a trip to the store during cold and flu season. Heart meds and insulin as well have a street value. There is no such thing as innocent “borrowing from work” when it affects profits. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted “Diversion in senior care is done covertly, and methods in place in many institutions leave cases undetected or unreported.”
The manual e-kit tackle box is problematic – and possibly irreconcilable. On top of illegible or missing paperwork, open access for drug shopping, time-waste from finding the box, now COVID-19 presents an additional problem of too much physical contact. The average small tackle box can contain up to $1,500 of medications … with no tracking in place. Few industries would be so casual when dealing with essentially a portable treasure chest.
Any time a 1st or Stat dose is hustled out to the facility, it costs too much. Whether that is your pharmacy’s employee, or a courier, or a contract community pharmacy, the fees could represent 4-6% of average gross revenue. The average estimated cost to fill and deliver one Stat does is $150. Compounding the problem is that 68% of LTC pharmacies have a service radius of 50+ miles. (We haven’t even addressed the soft cost of a dissatisfied DoN whose patient is waiting.)
This has only gotten worse with COVID-19 because pharmacies that have limited access to the facilities have more difficulty maintaining tight records of meds that are about to expire or have already. Attempting to rotate costly meds, maintain lot numbers and recalls requires labor, travel and time – if you can access the facility.
The real cost of managing expired mediations is additive: FTE time + travel time + travel cost + medication cost.
Most automated dispensing systems (going back to the mid-1980s) were developed for acute care. These large, complex systems were shoehorned into LTC. The result hasn’t changed in three decades: many ADCs are too much functionality and cost for wide acceptance in senior care. Plus, the bigger the system, the more hesitant the staff is to use it. Thus, the status quo persists. Even in the face of known profit-draining problems of a manual e-kit system, pharmacies are hesitant to adopt.
Using technology to address these five challenges head-on. An automated dispensing cabinet system, like Capsa’s NexsysADC, addresses the sources of profit drain immediately.
NexsysADC is the ADC for any budget, formulary or med room. Capsa’s unique design approach helps pharmacies get over any previous hesitation with automation (too big, too expensive, too complex). Plus, NexsysADC can give a pharmacy a distinct competitive advantage. Today’s hyper-competitive environment favors the provider that covers all bases, including technology to ensure the right dose is always onsite, when needed, with the proper security around it.
Watch a live presentation about how NexsysADC can directly address an institutional pharmacy’s profitability through technology.