Automated Cash Pricing: Optimizing Revenue and Empowering Staff
How RxCash+ from RedSail Technologies offers Bremo Pharmacy a cash pricing solution that ensures consistency, competitiveness, and optimized revenue. | Sponsored
by Will Lockwood
Independent pharmacies today face significant challenges, often struggling with low reimbursements from pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and a constant need to find new revenue streams. Pharmacy staff is often buried in the day-to-day tasks of managing operational details that can be better handled with the effective use of technology. One example of an ongoing operational challenge is cash pricing for prescriptions, which is often inconsistently managed with labor-intensive, manual efforts. Cash pricing is an essential administrative pricing task and a vital underpinning of revenue, but without the right tools, it diverts focus from patient care.
The emergence of data-driven pricing automation technology, such as RxCash+ from RedSail Technologies, offers pharmacies a solution that ensures consistency, competitiveness, and optimized revenue. Crucially, this newfound efficiency also allows pharmacy staff to take on elevated roles and dedicate more time to high-value clinical services and patient engagement, fostering a sustainable balance between business needs and patient care.
BREMO PHARMACY: A CASE STUDY
At Bremo Pharmacy, located in Richmond, Va., and serving both community patients and long-term care (LTC) facilities, RxCash+ has had just this impact, turning the cash pricing management workflow from a burden into a strategically beneficial tool.
Bremo Pharmacy’s retail location offers a strong medication synchronization program, adherence packaging, compounding, clinical services, and delivery. The LTC pharmacy serves approximately 500 group homes across Virginia with delivery and shipping. Both locations integrate clinical services and rely heavily on pharmacy technicians to elevate pharmacists’ roles in the delivery of care.
“We have a very robust clinical services team,” says Leighton Mascari, Pharm.D., clinical pharmacist at Bremo. “And that team relies heavily on our pharmacy technicians to elevate the pharmacists to the top of our practice and our support staff to manage operations.”
Mascari also takes responsibility for implementing special projects at Bremo Pharmacy. In that capacity, she searched for the right technology solution to address the task of managing cash pricing. About a year ago, Bremo Pharmacy chose RxCash+ from RedSail Technologies to replace its manual cash pricing methods. “We use the PioneerRx pharmacy management system from RedSail,” explains Mascari, “and RxCash+ integrates seamlessly with our PioneerRx data tables, without the need for a separate switch that we found was required for other solutions in the market.”
“We have a very robust clinical services team. And that team relies heavily on our pharmacy technicians to elevate the pharmacists to the top of our practice and our support staff to manage operations.” – Leighton Mascari, Pharm.D., Clinical Pharmacist, Bremo Pharmacy
With RxCash+ and PioneerRx, Bremo Pharmacy has an all-in-one solution for cash pricing technology. “We can access all the necessary information directly from within PioneerRx,” Mascari continues. This means that Bremo Pharmacy avoids the complexity and potential for data transfer issues that Mascari found can be associated with a non-integrated solution.
PRICING AUTOMATION BENEFITS PHARMACY AND CLIENTS
Mascari reports that the primary goal at Bremo Pharmacy was to use RxCash+ to achieve pricing consistency across its community and long-term care locations. “Our OTC [over-the-counter] and cash pricing strategies were very different before,” she says. “RxCash+ applies rules to create consistent pricing and eliminates one-offs.”
These “one-off” prices worked in a few circumstances, but, as in many pharmacies, weren’t always competitive based on the pharmacy’s purchasing costs, due to chronic underpricing. “RxCash+ makes pricing more consistent across that board by removing individual discretion,” says Mascari.
RxCash+ also helps address an issue within Bremo’s LTC business, where prices had been static for many years. “We needed to raise those prices so that they were in line with the market,” says Mascari. “We talked with our clients about this, but we also knew that we didn’t want them to experience the shock of one big increase.” Instead, Mascari reports, Bremo Pharmacy was able to use RxCash+ to implement a strategy that incrementally increased pricing. In the end, Bremo Pharmacy is bringing LTC cash pricing to where it needs to be with minimal disruption for clients.
This LTC strategy is an excellent example of how RxCash+ automates the pricing tables management, avoiding large, infrequent price hikes that might strain the relationship between pharmacies and facilities.
EMPOWERING STAFF, SUPPORTING REVENUE
Automating pricing tasks also has the benefit of freeing up the staff who run the manual cash pricing process, usually pharmacy technicians. “This allows our pharmacy techs to take on new roles supporting our clinical programs and our pharmacists,” says Mascari. Examples include assisting with high-value services, such as quarterly clinical services projects like heart health surveys and ramping up patient engagement through the pharmacy’s medication synchronization program.
“Cash pricing is something that pharmacies can control, so it’s something you want to be mindful of as you’re managing your pharmacy.” – Leighton Mascari, Pharm.D.
Finding ways to support and increase revenues has to be on the to-do list for every pharmacy these days. And clinical services, which are at the heart of what Bremo Pharmacy does, can definitely provide both a revenue lift and a strong return on investment when the staff has the time to focus on them. At the same time, notes Mascari, better automated cash pricing in itself leads to higher revenue.
“We’ve seen about a $5 increase in margins per prescription using RxCash+ here at Bremo Pharmacy,” says Mascari. This is just the sort of quantifiable revenue lift that is critical for supporting a pharmacy in its delivery of care, especially in an environment of poor reimbursement from third-party payers. As Masacri notes, “Cash pricing is something that pharmacies can control, so it’s something you want to be mindful of as you’re managing your pharmacy.”
FAIR COMPENSATION FOR LOW-COST GENERICS
Furthermore, RxCash+ offers a way to address pricing of low-cost generics and OTC products. “We recognized that neglecting the pricing of OTC products, especially those they package for long-term care and retail, could lead to losing out on revenue and margins,” says Mascari. “RxCash+ provides a tool to ensure competitive and optimized pricing for these items.”
And when it comes to low-cost generics, pharmacies often operate on a simple pricing model — cost plus 10%, for example — that results in low or negative margins on these generics. RxCash+, however, can be set to seek a more robust dispensing fee on generic prescriptions, which then ensures the pharmacy is fairly compensated for its time and services, even on low-cost items.
VALUE IN A FLEXIBLE, DATA-DRIVEN APPROACH
Mascari reports that RxCash+ is using the latest technology, including artificial intelligence, to set pricing. “We’re able to take into account pricing from a competitive market,” she says. “Some of the other pricing tools we looked at were just scraping prescription discount card data. In our case, RxCash+ uses a much wider array of data that leads to more accurate benchmarking.”
Mascari reports that RxCash+ is using the latest technology, including artificial intelligence, to set pricing.
Mascari also points to the value Bremo Pharmacy has seen from consulting with RxCash+ coaching and support. “We’re not on our own setting up our pricing strategies,” she says. “For example, RxCash+ coaches helped us set up the incremental price increases on the LTC side.” This demonstrates the ability to tailor the system so that it is running a pricing strategy specific to Bremo Pharmacy, rather than the pharmacy having to pick a template and force its strategy to match.
STAYING COMPETITIVE AND PATIENT FOCUSED
RxCash+ has proven to be a transformative tool for Bremo Pharmacy, enabling a strategic approach to cash pricing that addresses the complexities of pharmacy reimbursement. Automating and optimizing pricing not only supports revenue and profitability but also empowers staff to shift their focus to higher-value clinical services, ultimately enhancing patient care and business sustainability.
“With RxCash+ Bremo Pharmacy is in a better competitive position,” says Mascari, “and we can really focus on the care and services we deliver.” PTMR
Will Lockwood is VP and senior editor at Pharmacy Technology & Management Review. Will can be reached at will@computertalk.com.
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