Every doctor wants happier staff, streamlined in-office tasks and better patient outcomes. When you can provide these things, you look like a super hero. You become known as the doctor who really cares about patients, the doctors that cares about staff, and as a provider for all patient needs. Point of care dispensing takes care of all of this.
Point of Care Dispensing can help you become this super hero within your community. And on top of all those benefits, you can also significantly increase your revenue.
What Is Point of Care Dispensing
Point of care dispensing is also called in-office dispensing. With an in-office dispensary, you can prescribe medicine and fill prescriptions for your patients at the point of care. Meaning, before your patient leaves your office, you can provide them with the medication they need.
In-Office dispensing gives you the opportunity to provide your patients with a value-added service. It is simply a mini-pharmacy located right there in your office.
There are different models you can opt for when setting up this system. You can choose a simpler model that allows you to fill the prescriptions. Or, you can choose a larger model that allows you to hire a pharmacist part-time or full-time, or a pharmacy technician, to fill the prescriptions.
The ability to dispense medicines in your practice offers your practice many rewards.
No More Communicating with Pharmacists
Physician and Pharmacy communications aren’t the best. It is mostly done through technology.
But, you can eliminate faxing, refaxing and back and forth phone calls with the pharmacist. All your patient’s information is stored in the point of care dispensing software program, which allows you to distribute medicine to your patients.
The process is simple. You or your staff enters the prescription into the computer. A label is printed with all the details of your patient and their prescription. You then retrieve the prepackaged prescription from the dispensary box, hand it to your patient and you are working with your next patient in no time at all.
Same Number of Patients, Increased Income
Providing ancillary services such as in-office dispensing can offer you more money without having to expand your patient case load. When others find out you provide this service, they may want to become your patients. But instead of feeling obligated to take them on to increase revenue, you will have the option to choose the patients you want to see.
Some reports claim adding an in-office dispensing program can bring between $50,000 to $200,000 extra each year. Both numbers make it worth the effort.
Other reports claim you can make up to $5 per prescription written through your point of care prescribing program. Now take the number of prescriptions you write per year and multiply that by five. That’s a significant increase.
Adding a service such as this leads you to add even more ancillary services down the road. Retail is one of the largest ancillary services that offers the greatest returns. Just like ophthalmologists sell eye glasses in their office, you can sell medical products.
There are hundreds of products to help treat multiple medical problems. Choose the products your patients need the most. Or, you can offer ancillary procedures to make more capital.
These can include surgeries, like those considered to be cosmetic, that are mostly paid for by the patient, giving you even greater profit margins.
Additional income streams can be beneficial for any medical practice. In-office dispensing is an easy to use method of creating more revenue that will increase as the years go on.
Safety is Increased for Patients
Pharmacists rarely take the time to talk to patients about drug interactions. In fact, an undercover investigation by the news show 20/20 revealed that 70 percent of the pharmacies they visited did not take the time to tell patients about potentially harmful interactions.
Prepackaged medications come complete with drug interaction information on the packaging. You can compare patient medications and print any interaction information from the software technology.
Some drugs look alike. Some drugs look identical. Pharmacists and their technicians get pills confused, causing harm to the patients who take the medications.
Prepackaged medication completely avoids this problem because the pills are separated in pouches. The manufacturer sends them to the prepackaging company, who then separates them individually.
Cross-contamination can happen. People do not realize this, but medicines can be handled by pharmacy technicians and pharmacists that can pass germs to their medicines.
Prepackaged medications prevent germs from getting onto medicines. The prepackaging companies have state of the art equipment that must pass federal and state laws surrounding cleanliness.
Your Staff Will Be Happier
The duties within your office will be streamlined and this will make your staff happy. Using a web-based portal, most point of care dispensing duties are completed for your staff. All they must do is learn the software. When it is time, they simply click a few buttons on the computer and they can complete a range of duties, from billing to dispensing to refills.
With web-based portals, your billing staff has the capability of sending claims with the simple click of a button. This is so because the software system is set up with a direct link to every insurance company’s claims submission portal.
Dispensing software is also known for its capabilities to handle workman’s compensation billing and communications. This takes a lot of work away from the staff, so they can focus on caring for the patient.
The connection between these two portals makes it easy for you, your staff, and even for the insurance company.
With in-office dispensing and web based portals, your staff can print educational information leaflets and FDA medication guides directly from the computer. Before they leave your office, you can provide them with all the information they need to understand their medication.
Considering point of care dispensing means you are ready to improve patient and staff satisfaction. It means you are ready to enjoy the rewards you have earned in your many years as a physician.
