Physician dispensing promotes medication accessibility and streamlines the healthcare journey for those under your supervision. In addition to improving patient care, an in-office dispensing system can create secondary revenue streams for your practice and help attract new clients. However, if you want your program to thrive, you’ll need to create an efficient physician dispensing process.
Admittedly, prescribing meds and dispensing those drugs all under one roof can be complicated. Below, you’ll find actionable tips for creating an efficient physician dispensing process that promotes compliance and adequately meets the needs of those you serve.
Understanding the Benefits of Physician Dispensing
In-office dispensing offers numerous benefits. For instance, it can provide:
Improved Patient Convenience
Getting medications in the hands of your clients before they leave the office makes the experience far more convenient. As a result, your clients don’t have to travel to their local pharmacy, wait around for hours, or worry about whether the pharmacist got the order right.
Enhanced Patient Adherence and Outcomes
By providing drugs in the office, you can reduce the risk of medication errors and improve patient outcomes by boosting medication adherence. If you get the medications in their hands before they leave the doctor’s office, they are more likely to take their prescription medications as directed.
Increased Practice Revenue
Point-of-care medication dispensing represents a great tool for boosting practice revenue. Dispensing programs allow you to access additional insurance reimbursements while increasing patient satisfaction.
Preparing for Physician Dispensing
Getting your facility or physician’s office ready for point-of-care dispensing requires a proactive approach. Start by:
Assessing Your Practice’s Needs
First, consider what prescription drugs you’ll need to stock. Tailor your inventory based on your core client base. Also, make sure to identify necessary medications, such as antibiotics, that apply to virtually any demographic.
Evaluating Legal and Regulatory Requirements
Next, consider state regulations and federal laws governing medication dispensing by healthcare professionals. You’ll likely need to coordinate with the state medical board and the board of pharmacy. Find out what the specific registration requirements are, including any fees and applications involved.
Securing Necessary Certifications and Licenses
Next, you’ll need to register with the State Board of Pharmacy, which involves paying an application fee and submitting certain documents, such as proof that you are a licensed medical provider. You’ll also need to register with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) if you intend to dispense controlled substances.
Setting Up Your Dispensing Area
After you’ve addressed the legal and compliance challenges of physician dispensing, it’s time to set up your dispensing area by:
Choosing the Right Location Within Your Practice
Choose an area that you can both easily secure after hours and facilitate easy access when the doors are open. Remember, you will need to send clients to the dispensing area to pick up their meds. However, you are also responsible for keeping sensitive drugs, especially controlled substances, secure.
Designing an Efficient Layout
Next, design an efficient layout that allows patients to easily flow in and out of the dispensing area. Based on your typical volume during peak hours, choose the size and composition of your dispensing area.
Ensuring Proper Storage and Inventory Management
You must implement robust inventory management and storage protocols to keep drugs safe, unadulterated, and secure from theft. Using prepackaged medications can help simplify inventory management, as team members won’t have to manually prepare meds or count pills.
Additionally, consider investing in automated inventory management software that keeps up with stock levels in real-time. Such a solution will help optimize reordering processes and ensure that you account for every drug.
Selecting and Managing Inventory
Here are some tips for choosing which drugs to keep in your inventory:
Identifying Essential Medications
Start by identifying prescription drugs that are most critical to your patient demographic. Focus on essentials and build out your inventory from there.
Establishing Relationships With Reliable Suppliers
You will need a network of reputable and properly licensed suppliers to maintain consistent inventory. Prioritize those who offer pre-packaged medications, as these are easier to inventory, maintain, store, and distribute.
Implementing Inventory Control Systems
Partnering with physician dispensing companies can simplify your inventory management journey. The top providers offer cloud-based software for tracking drugs and creating auditable records.
Implementing Technology Solutions
Establishing efficient physician dispensing processes requires innovation, proactivity, and the right technologies. When it comes to technology, you should focus on:
Utilizing Dispensing Software
Don’t rely on manual processes, as they are inefficient and expose you to unnecessary compliance risks. Instead, use dispensing software to promote transparency, traceability, and accountability.
Integrating Electronic Health Records (EHR) Systems
Integrate your software with electronic health records systems so that you can automatically add new prescriptions to a patient’s healthcare data. This promotes transparency and helps you protect people from side effects associated with prescribing contraindicated drugs.
Automating Reordering and Inventory Tracking
Automating reordering processes will help you prevent shortages and ensure that patients can easily access critical meds when they need them. Additionally, automation reduces the administrative burden on your team, allowing them to focus on more dynamic tasks.
Training Staff for Efficient Dispensing
After you’ve laid the groundwork for an efficient physician dispensing process, it’s time to put your team in a position to thrive. You can begin to do so by:
Developing Comprehensive Training Programs
Create a robust upskilling program designed to teach staff valuable skills. Make sure to invest in cross-training so that team members from different departments can step up and fill the void in case one of your critical staff members can’t make it to work.
Ensuring Staff Understand Regulatory Compliance
Make sure your team understands the importance of regulatory compliance and their role in insulating your practice from risk. Explain their responsibilities and regularly update them on the latest requirements. Also, create a policy manual or other reference tool so that they can refresh their memory as needed.
Conducting Ongoing Education and Updates
The regulatory environment constantly changes. In response, you must prioritize ongoing training and policy updates in order to stay ahead of rule changes and maintain a state of compliance.
Ensuring Patient Safety and Compliance
Patient safety must always be top of mind, especially when creating a dispensing program. Here’s how to make patient safety a priority:
Adhering to Prescription Labeling Standards
Familiarize yourself with the Food & Drug Administration’s (FDA) rules on prescription drug labeling. Ensure that you are including all relevant data on drug labels, including the expiration date, patient name, type of medication, and issuing doctor. This can all be automated when using physician dispensing software provided by Proficient Rx.
Providing Clear Patient Instructions and Counseling
Don’t rely on simple handouts or pamphlets to educate your clients. Instead, have detailed conversations with them on medication instructions, side effects, and other topics relevant to their prescriptions.
Monitoring for Adverse Reactions and Reporting
Continually monitor your patients for side effects and adverse reactions, especially in the first few weeks of prescribing a new drug. Make sure that you promptly report any unusual reactions.
Best Practices for Maintaining Efficiency
Once your dispensing program gets up and running, you can fine-tune it by:
Streamlining Workflow Processes
Examine your workflows and identify opportunities to achieve meaningful efficiency gains. For instance, you could automate the transfer of information from medical practitioners to dispensers, tweak your record-keeping strategy to reduce compliance risks, or gather feedback from patients to see what they would like you to do differently.
Regularly Reviewing and Updating Procedures
No matter how good of a job you did while creating your policy manual, there will always be room for improvement. Create a schedule for reviewing and updating procedures so you can keep your policies up-to-date and relevant.
Gathering and Utilizing Patient Feedback
The patients you serve are your best source of feedback about your doctor dispensing program. They can provide a fresh perspective on what’s working and what isn’t.
Measuring Success and Continuous Improvement
You should consistently work to improve your program. Some strategies for doing this include:
Tracking Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Key performance indicators provide important insights into your program’s efficiency and the overall client journey. However, remember that each KPI only gives a piece of the puzzle. You need to combine several relevant metrics to get a full view of program performance.
Conducting Periodic Audits and Assessments
You should routinely audit your program and pay close attention to any inventory discrepancies or other risks that may result in fines. While the software does provide inventory reports, your practice should do a manual check routinely.
Implementing Changes Based on Data-Driven Insights
Never change your program for the sake of it. Instead, let the data derived from your KPIs guide your optimization efforts so that you can better serve your patients, increase efficiency, and maximize revenue.
Starting a Dispensing Program
Launching a physician dispensing program can be great for your practice and — more importantly — the people you serve. However, you must prioritize efficiency from day one to mitigate waste and compliance risks.
What to Keep in Mind
Creating efficient physician dispensing processes requires a concerted effort from healthcare providers, administrative staff, and support personnel. You’ll also need to empower your team with the right technologies and processes. By doing so, you can develop a robust program that promotes better outcomes.
Encouraging Efficient and Effective Dispensing Practices
Are you ready to build efficient physician dispensing processes that enhance the journey for those under your supervision? Explore ProficientRx’s free resources, including our guide on how physician dispensing works.
If you are ready to take the next steps, contact us. We provide cloud-based physician dispensing software and hands-on support designed to promote compliance, efficiency, and positive patient outcomes.