Don't Put All Your Eggs in One Basket
Jul 02, 2023
You need multiple baskets – or revenue streams – to have a profitable, sustainable pharmacy. Most pharmacies rely too heavily on dispensing prescription for their revenue. In fact, for a typical independent pharmacy, 91% of revenue comes from filling prescriptions. Other pharmacy channels like chains and supermarket pharmacies, are much less dependent on filling scripts for revenue.
Your Eggs May Soon be Scrambled if You Don’t Diversify Your Revenue Streams
Pharmacy benefit managers have been coming after your income for years and take over 4% of your profits annually in DIR fees. This will get worse in early 2024 when PBMs impose double DIR fees – one collected at the point of sale beginning on January 1, and the claw backs from medications dispensed in 2023. This is called the DIR fee Armageddon and 50% of pharmacy owners admit they won’t have the cash flow to pay double DIR fees occurring in early 2024.
Don’t Just Do Nothing
You have clinical skills and customer relationships that are not found in other pharmacy channels – and they are things which consumers want. Leverage them or quickly acquire them.
Consumers want more than just getting their medications from you. They want expanded clinical services, they want your knowledge, and they want the convenience of doing it all in one place – your pharmacy.
Offering point of care testing services meets your customers where they are. Fourteen percent of independent pharmacies are offering point of care testing (POCT) and this percentage is rapidly climbing being driven by consumer interest and welcomed by primary care physicians. Be at the vanguard of this wave and differentiate yourself from your competition.
If you are on the sidelines about POCT or need to know more, check out the free resource 13 Irrefutable Benefits of Point of Care Testing. If you are further along and are ready to start offering POCT in your pharmacy and want to do so within a month, the POCTi Powerhouse is the option for you.
Doing nothing is not a good strategy if you generate 90 percent of your revenue from dispensing medications. Prepare yourself and your pharmacy for the double whammy occurring in early 2024.
