Pharmacy Bargain Hunting with MatchRx – Monthly Mastermind March 2024

Pharmacy Bargain Hunting with MatchRx – Monthly Mastermind March 2024

Transcription:
All righty, we will go ahead and get started. So welcome to this month’s monthly mastermind mastermind call. And we are going to be talking about pharmacy bargain hunting. Of course, we are in the smack dab middle of the DIR fee apocalypse, which means cash flow is tight and it was going to remain tight for at least another three months. And then that will start to kind of ease a little bit better as you stop having so many retroactive payments from 2023 coming in. So that’ll start about June, but we got a solid another three months in front of us. So I wanted to talk to you guys today about bargain hunting with match our ex. And the way that our monthly mastermind works is feel free to hop in at any time with any questions. I’m going to make sure everybody is on mute. If you have a question, feel free to chat it. Or you can raise your hand and I will unmute you and you can ask your question. So, um, let’s dive into this. Today it is going to be a bit of like, it’s going to feel short. Some of our mastermind topics are like complicated beasts. This one really isn’t so complicated. But don’t let the brevity and like the easy a parent’s take away from any of the impact that it can have on your pharmacy for sure. So if you guys have any questions, if you’re you know, watching this later, maybe share it with your pharmacy staff members. And you have any questions use the community chat or the Contact Us link that’s in the top menu of the membership. Don’t forget about our office hours, Tuesdays at 10am and of course our membership website, that’s where all the links are at. And if you need any help or support, you need help adding employees to make sure they have access to all of this stuff. You can always email assistant at diversifier x.com with their names and emails and we’ll get them added to the membership under your account. So each member gets up to 10 Total login So feel free to share this with anybody on your team that can help you move your pharmacy forward. You don’t need to be stingy with the logins, go ahead and share them. Alright, so we are bargain hunting, okay, I’m gonna go through kind of the how tos a little bit, some of the philosophy behind it and just some really quick steps, you can get started, because it can save you 1000s of dollars a month. So, in my pharmacy with about $3,000 a month is what we save, the more we use it, the more you save, it’s kind of like one of those things. And because you’re purchasing, we’ll talk about this a little bit later, because you’re purchasing for a specific patient, you’re not just adding a bunch of stock to your inventory, this is actually real savings, because you would have had to buy the drug from your, you know, regular wholesaler at a higher price. And so this is actual savings you you feel and you see right away. So that’s why I like to talk about this in the midst of the DIR fee Apocalypse that we are so All right. So why, why are we talking about this, okay, I mentioned the DIR fee, Apocalypse, cash flow is tight. And one of the best ways to improve your cash flow is to pay less for your drugs. And that can be hard to do from you know, especially if you’re at the big three years, or stuff like that, there’s, there’s not like there’s any negotiating. So one of the ways that you can do that is one we often recommend, if you’ve listened to us at all, is don’t have don’t buy all your drugs from that, you know, typical primary vendor, use your secondary wholesalers. But go go shopping, go bargain shopping, you know, many of you, if you have kids, when it’s back to school time, you know, you don’t go to the most expensive boutique store to go back to school shopping, because you’re getting so many basics and you’re getting so much volume, you tend to go to you know, maybe the outlet stores or those kinds of things. And so that’s really what what match RX is and it’s really that that bargain shopping. So again, this is money, you would spend more money on the same product purchasing from your wholesaler than you do for metrics so it really does save you money that you see in your bank account. You get to basically keep more of your money so what is metrics? There’s so many pharmacy company names out there I get it, they all sound alike. They all get mixed up and like who’s who and what’s what. And so um, metrics I always like to be clear metrics is you know, they’re not arcs cherry pick. We talked about arcs cherry pick all the time. So I want to go through kind of like who met metrics. So metrics is a platform that matches pharmacy together. So it says like pharmacy matchmaking, over 7000 pharmacies use metrics, and they use it to either buy or sell inventory at a discount to other pharmacies. So this is pharmacy to pharmacy selling. It isn’t there’s no wholesaler involved? Well, and we’ll talk about what metrics isn’t it, okay. So in his pharmacy to pharmacy selling, they also provide the dscsa compliance, we know that the you know, enforcement of that got delayed till November of this year, but many places and you should be to putting in and getting your pharmacy ready for dscsa compliance. So they provide all of that compliance for pharmacy to pharmacy selling, so there’s no wholesaler involved on this side of the transaction. matchrx never touches the medications, they they are not a wholesaler. So you are actually not buying from matcher X you’re actually buying from another pharmacy. So I think that’s really important that you understand, like what this is, it’s basically just a website for pharmacy to communicate, hey, I want to sell these 10 drugs, and where a pharmacy can go on and say, Hey, what’s for sale? What might I want to buy? Okay, so I always just want to be really clear, like from that legal standpoint. And then the question we get asked all the time, like is using matcher X allowed many people match has been or at metrics has been around for years. And so what happened is many times, a pharmacy might have looked into metrics eight years ago, or 10 years ago, and it might not have been allowed in their states. They’ve worked really, really hard on the legislation standpoint and with State Boards of Pharmacy in many states to be able to get to sell in state. So right now the answer to that question is in most states, the answer is yes. It’s still not allowed in all 50 states, but in most states, the answer is yes. Now some states do have stipulations of purchasing from a another pharmacy has to be for a specific patient. You cannot just stock you know, hey, this is a really good deal. Let me just have this on on hand. So if you see you know, HUMIRA on there $400 You can’t just be like, Well, I don’t have any HUMIRA prescriptions right now. No, I’m just going to buy this and hold it. Some states have the stipulation that you have to buy the products specifically for a specific patient. Now, obviously, if you’re buying the product, you’re dispensing it, that’s not a hard requirement to, to, you know, meet. But just so you know, you, in some states, you’ll have to document I, I would recommend you document on those invoices that you get from the other pharmacy that you bought it from that, hey, I bought this for, you know, Mrs. Johnson. And here’s the prescription number, if your state is one of those that requires that so in most states, yes, there are some stipulations. And the really cool thing that I love about metrics is they will help you be compliant with your state rules. So what are some of the other limitations, you are not going to find control drugs, you’re not going to find amphetamines, you’re not going to find oxys or anything like that. So it’s non controlled drugs only. And so it is a stipulation. But man, navigating DEA rules is just really hard. They’ve tried to get that, but it’s just something they’re still working on, must not be expired, because obviously you’re purchasing these to dispense you cannot sell expired drugs, but you know, pretty logical, pretty simple.
Now, when it comes to PB M invoice audits, the you are allowed, again, you are allowed and even PBMs have to allow you to purchase from another pharmacy. But if you’re an invoice audit, you want to make sure if that product is ever anything that you have purchased from another pharmacy on the match RX platform, you have to get those invoices. Now a lot of times, if you go to sell this, you upload the invoice for that particular drug. Now once we’re all kind of like dscsa compliant after November of this year, this gets much easier because then it’s all scanning and data and it’s all transfers kinds of things. But in this transition bridge time, there’s still going to be a bunch of paper invoices, it might have been on a product that you purchased, you know, 12 months ago. So even if you’re dscsa compliant today, you might not have electronic records for that bottle. So sellers have to upload invoices or you send a copy of that invoice in the package is generally how I have always experienced it. And then you have to keep that invoice from the other pharmacy. And then with your metrics paperwork, in order to submit that to a PBM in case of an invoice audit, I have personally not experienced the PBM audit with any products purchased for metrics, but one of our other members actually just recently did and they had bought a bunch of stuff. And it was just it’s definitely complicated. They were using also another platform. And that other platform didn’t have any requirements for sellers with invoices. And so it definitely got a little a little messier, with the purchases from the other platform. So be thinking from that standpoint, that you might at some point get audited, of course, not everything you’re gonna get audited for. But you just always want to operate with that. And just make sure you have all the paperwork together. So this is going to be very manual until everybody is compliant with dscsa. So you want to keep that folder together, you want to keep all the paperwork together. That way you can submit in case you have any of those PBM audits. So overall, what’s the benefits, products you buy are always going to be at a discount. And that’s because when you post items for sale, they require a certain amount of discount off of whack or aw up. So you’re always buying at a discount. You it allows you to move you’re almost dead inventory. So these are generally products that you can’t return to your primary wholesaler, if you can return your primary wholesaler for 100% credit, you know, then go do that. But these are really for products that they might be damaged with the patient label, maybe you know, you ordered a bottle, you opened it, you fill the prescription, the patient never picked it up. And now you have an open bottle, you know. So these are things that are generally not returnable to your wholesaler. And they’re just kind of sitting on your shelf, taking up your cash flow. So this is a great way for you to sell your almost dead inventory and recapture some of that cash back. You’re helping out another pharmacy, whether you’re buying or selling the other person on the other side of that transaction is another one just like us another independent pharmacy. So it’s kind of nice that you you get to help help out your fellow independent pharmacy owners and then match your ex will ensure you’re compliant with your state. There are some state with some little you know, like said little little nuances, they’ll make sure that you’re compliant with your state rules. And if you’re in one of those states that don’t allow match RX when you go to sign up, we’ll talk about in just a minute, they won’t let you so they will actually stop you from using them if you’re not in one of the states that are allowed. Alright, so here’s some quick steps you can literally get started today. It is super easy. So you create a a match or x account. Oops, I got my things out of order there. Um match rx.com is their website, you click on Register today, there’s a little icon like kind of in the middle, and then you put in your NCPDP number which you put your NCPDP number in, it’ll grab all of the information that’s on the NCPDP website. So it saves you from having to enter a bunch of information, except if the information on the NCPDP website, you haven’t updated it. So, but most of the time, you know, it 99% of the time, it’s there, you’ll have to just upload your licenses. And really, that’s it, it’s super easy to create an account. And I highly recommend it’s free, there’s no obligation that you ever have to purchase. But by just creating an account, it allows you to, you know, window shop, if you’re, if you’re not a woman, you may not be a fan of window shopping. But as a pharmacy owner, you should be a fan of window shopping for cheap drugs. So once you create that account, it allows you to window shop, to be able to see what’s out there. So it’s really easy, they try to make it as painless as possible. In order to do that. Next, you want to just start shopping. So if you’re pharmacies or anything like mine, I’m not on on site all the time. So just getting my my employees in a habit of looking at metrics. That’s probably the hardest part of this, so to speak, whenever I look at it, you know, whenever I’m going to look for stuff, I always find things that like, amazing discount. So think of matchrx like an outlet mall. And the sense like it’s the exact same thing, you know, Nordstrom outlet carries the exact same pants that Nordstrom has done, does, they’re just cheaper, but they may not always have the right size, or they may not have the color you want. Like it’s an outlet mall, you know, whereas if you go to the actual store, they carry all sizes, all colors, you know all things all the time. So, you know, inventory changes frequently. Something used, you know, if you log on and you see something today, it might be gone tomorrow it might be sold. So because again, this is not a wholesaler, the inventory is constantly changing. As people post things for sale, they sell it, things go off, you know, all those kinds of things. So just think of it a little bit like an outlet mall. Alright. Alright, number three, start selling. So recapture some of that cash flow. Of course, you you save money when you buy, but you can also make money when you sell. So go through inventory. If you haven’t cleaned your inventory, I highly recommend doing that. Make sure you take our inventory course that’s a little out of whack. Don’t feel bad, most pharmacies get their inventory out of whack. But start selling the stuff that you can’t return. Maybe it’s past the return date, and it’s perfectly fine bottle, or maybe it has damaged on it from a label you put on it or somebody exited or something like that, that makes it non returnable. So you want to sell I highly recommend you download their app, it’s much easier on a phone in my opinion, because you have to scan barcodes. And you have to upload pictures. And so it’s just much easier from the app, you don’t have to you can use the you know, like a desktop, it’s just I have found it easier to use the phone, upload your products. So whichever products you want to sell, it helps you know what price to put them at. So the data have to be at a certain discount. But if you want to discount it more you you obviously can, but there’s a minimum, I think it’s nine 9% off whack. So it’s like whack minus nine on brands, or it’s like aw p minus 25% or something like that. I forget the exact numbers, but it’ll tell you. But if you want to discount it cheap, you’re like, Dude, I just want to get this, you know rid of this bottle, you can do that. And then you ship via FedEx to buyers once it’s sold. And so everything between you’ll receive via FedEx, and they shouldn’t be at FedEx. And that’s when you get your money within a week I find less than a week. It’s really quick turnaround time. So as opposed to like, if you send obviously like when things are expired, you have to send them to you know, like the returns company like Flash returns. Manufacturers take months to give credits, you know, those kinds of things, this is really quick. So generally within less than a week, you’re getting your money for whatever products you sold. So I highly recommend doing that. So that’s it. Like I said, this is going to be quick and easy. But do not discount the impact that this can have on your pharmacy. We do have some members that like I mean shop every day, and they’re saving 10s of $1,000 a month on on stuff that they would otherwise normally have to you know pay full price for pay full retail price from the wholesalers. And so I know my pharmacies as little as we use it, we’re at about $3,000 a month and for each location, the more we use it, the more you save kind of thing, but it’s it’s very powerful. It’s it’s easy. It can feel a little weird because it’s just a new procedure just like any learning any new procedure is, but it’s definitely worth it and the more you can get your employees on board, like you make it fun for them like you know, it’s kind of like bargain hunting. And then I think the better off your pharmacy will be because they’ll find stuff like people are always selling stuff and on So that is does anyone have any specific questions and you’re on. And of course, if you’re watching the recording later, feel free, you can post questions in the community chat or click the Contact Us button. But is there any questions right now from anybody who is on live?
Okay, I don’t see any questions straightforward. Um, Max really walks you through the entire process, like they kind of handhold you. So they’ve got a great team over there. So obviously, if you have any questions, you can ask them as well. I mean, I’m certainly not as knowledgeable as they are about their own business. But I’m gonna just tell you from my experience of using them on there. So really, before I let y’all go, don’t forget about these member perks. Don’t forget about your graphic design requests. We have been doing a ton of requests lately, especially around like weight loss and allergy stuff. So go ahead and submit your request. Don’t forget office hours, Tuesdays at 10am. At your employees to the membership, they can learn directly from us, they can ask us questions, you know, take that burden off you a little bit. Don’t forget to schedule your car with Mike if you haven’t already. And then we can help you calculate your KPIs. We can help you input your KPIs. Like never hesitate to reach out to help. Like that’s what we’re here for. We’re here to help you. And we will always try to figure out a way if there’s humanly possible to do that. So all right, well, I want to go reCAPTCHA back a little bit of time in your day, and go go open your metrics account and start start bargain shopping and see how much you can save that first time. Like as soon as you find one product, you’re like, oh my gosh, like I’m saving this much like it then it becomes a little addictive. I ain’t gonna lie. And but hey, it means a more net profit for for you guys. So that’s it. Alright, well, I’ll let y’all go. Thank you all for joining me today and learning how to bargain hunt. And we’ll talk to y’all next well, not for office hours. I won’t be on Office Hours actually have a I think next week I have a Zoom meeting or something or zoo field trip with my daughter. But I’ll talk to you next time. I’m on Office Hours. So adios everybody. Bye bye.