The retail pharmacy industry is complex, both as a business and from an operational perspective. Each pharmacy is trying to serve its community by fulfilling 2 separate needs, one of which is an ingrained model of filling prescriptions efficiently to meet patient demands. With store consolidations occurring at an increasing rate in the industry and the annual number of prescriptions in the US projected to grow, pharmacies will be busier than ever.1 The second need is providing an ever-growing number of clinical services to meet the health care needs of patients.2
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Pharmacy teams must always ensure all systems are safe and secure and ensure the accurate performance of activities happening within them. Various solutions are available in the marketplace to support a more efficient pharmacy. Most pharmacy technology companies have a range of these solutions, some offering many options and others offering a select few. Pharmacies that will emerge to lead in the future will need to partner with these companies and learn how to use these solutions to provide high-quality care.
**Tom Giglio, PharmD,** is senior director for pharmacy operations enterprise solutions at Rite Aid. In this role, he supports Rite Aid’s 1300 locations with pharmacy operations strategy and technology solutions.
AUTOMATED FILLING SOLUTIONS
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The primary solution is the automation of prescription filling. Currently, there are large central fill facilities that fill tens of thousands of prescriptions daily as well as microsites supporting smaller regions. Additionally, there are in-store devices ranging from machines that count, label, and cap the prescription vial to a simple counting device positioned on the counter, with multiple options in between. All these devices have different up-front costs and space requirements, which can be critical deciding points based on the requirements of the pharmacy.
Another important deciding factor is how the pharmacy management system will help support the filling of prescriptions. Current solutions range from internally developed software to commercially available options. For instance, Rite Aid uses an internally developed system, NexGen, that is on version 80 as of February 2024. Pharmacists within the company provide positive reviews of the way the system flows as well as safety checks within the system to support accurate and efficient prescription dispensing. The system looks very different now than it did many years ago when it was first developed. One reason that the NexGen system is widely considered to be efficient, safe, and user-friendly is that we collect and implement the feedback of our users, both pharmacists and technicians, when developing new versions. For any pharmacy management system, the need to identify ways to improve it based on user feedback will truly allow management and dispensing systems to meet the needs of their users.
OTHER TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS
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Beyond pharmacy management systems, there are clinical tools available to help pharmacists identify, present, and engage with the patient for clinical opportunities. One such example is Rite Aid’s Rite Care system, which is a proprietary clinical services identification tool used by pharmacists and technicians that utilizes analytic modeling to connect the patient with the pharmacist for vaccine needs, medication therapy management, adherence check-ins, and other services. Once again, the range of these services was considered in the development of software and commercially available options. In this space, it is expected that many companies will employ numerous options to solve different opportunities.
There are also digital tools that allow patients to manage their health care through web- and mobile-based applications. The customizability of the applications truly brings the patient to the forefront of their health care decision-making. These systems provide notifications via different messaging systems to ensure patients are aware of prescriptions and clinical needs. Typically, this comes with a quicker way to complete a transaction, such as paying co-pays online before arrival at the pharmacy. Though often overlooked, the phone system used by a pharmacy is a critical piece of technology. This can range from a simple dial and pickup of the phone to a complex personalized offering that will allow patients to check the status of prescriptions, refill prescriptions, and schedule clinical services without having to talk to an associate. As phone systems continue to evolve, they will be able to create efficiencies that free up valuable pharmacy associate time by allowing patients to perform more functions themselves.
Point-of-sale (POS) solutions are a key aspect of pharmacy in which efficient processes need to blend with clinical interactions. There is a proverbial catch-22 at the POS because on one hand, you have one of the most repetitious functions in the pharmacy; automating or removing this would create huge time wins for patients and pharmacy teams. This is where delivery services, pharmacy lockers, and enhanced POS technology come into play. On the other hand, the POS can be a valuable interaction with patients that can be an opportunity to address many clinical issues as well as collect accurate demographics and preferences in a patient’s profile to support their ongoing health journey.
The propelling idea for the future is that if a human is spending time completing a task, how can technology make that process faster or replace the task? If a patient is interacting with the pharmacy, how can that journey be as seamless as possible?
IDENTIFYING OPPORTUNITIES
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To identify technological opportunities in each pharmacy, it is critical to have a starting point and find a baseline. This baseline can be used to support strategic decisions on product road maps. For instance, if a pharmacy processes 200 million transactions per year, finding a solution that saves a mere 5 seconds per transaction results in annual time savings of nearly 278,000 hours. Inversely, a company may find a barrier that occurs 100,000 times a year in its pharmacy management system. If this barrier slows production by 60 seconds each time it occurs, the resulting impact would be nearly 1667 hours annually. After establishing an accurate baseline and identifying opportunities, the next step would be to understand the cost and timeline of each enhancement to have a clear picture to evaluate resourcing.
As companies offer and evaluate product road maps for clinical tools, they can and should employ such tactics to improve efficiency. There are many other factors to consider, however. Clinical technology tools need to identify the right patient opportunity, at the right time, with the right information. For clinicians to deliver care, the importance of having the right information at their fingertips cannot be overstated. Information collected via digital routes from patients, their electronic health records, and clinical resources will provide the best patient experience and subsequent health outcomes.
As we look to a world where pharmacies continue to integrate traditional prescription filling with expanded service offerings, new workflows will not only need to be created but refined and refined again.
Imagine a future pharmacy in which a prescription is received electronically, the patient’s information and prescription data are entered into the pharmacy’s system automatically, data are verified by an accurate and reliable automated process, the prescription goes to a robot for filling, and the system immediately alerts the patient with convenient options to receive their prescription. This utopian scenario would allow the entire pharmacy team to focus on providing crucial clinical services. Ultimately, visions such as this will enable the overall health care system to take lower acuity care and move it into the pharmacy so more resources are available for individuals with more serious illness in hospitals, urgent care facilities, and provider offices.
The most exciting thing about the future is the mark we get to leave on it. Although there are many tools available and many considerations before using them, the voice of the pharmacist is critical. It is not only critical for the use of tools now but for the evolution of technology, so the next time you have the opportunity to provide feedback, take the time to do so. You could be influencing the direction of operating systems and technology advancements for the pharmacy of the future. Keeping patients at the forefront of our decision making will allow technology to meet their needs and provide immense value to the health care system and the communities it serves.
###### **REFERENCES**
###### 1\. Competition, consolidation, and evolution in the pharmacy market. The Commonwealth Fund. August 12, 2021. Accessed January 17, 2025. https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2021/aug/competition-consolidation-evolution-pharmacy-market
###### 2\. Hamstra M. Envisioning an ideal model for retail pharmacy. Drug Store News. March 15, 2024. Accessed January 17, 2025. https://drugstorenews.com/envisioning-ideal-model-retail-pharmacy