The 4 Things I Do To Increase Profits In My Pharmacies

The 4 Things I Do To Increase Profits In My Pharmacies

Transcription:

It is time for our monthly mastermind call. Hello, I’m Dr. Lisa Faast. If you don’t know me, hopefully you do or probably you’re probably sick of hearing from me if you’ve been watching some of our videos, but don’t worry, we’ve got more coming from our wonderful other coaches Lisa Baker and Mike, you know, we’re trying to bring some other voices in there. But I’m excited about this monthly mastermind, which is going to be me presenting. So feel free to ask any questions at any time or break in. But I’m going to be going through the four things that I do in my pharmacy to immediately boost profits. So when I purchase a new pharmacy, these are the four things that kind of like happen right away. And I’ve talked about this above for like, you know, maybe some blogs or some office hours. But I thought I’d like formally put it out there and like, let’s have a discussion on these. So feel free, you can chat. You know, ask questions in the chat, you can unmute yourself, you don’t have to go on video if you don’t want to be on video. But, you know, this can be a conversation, it doesn’t just have to be me, you know, lecturing at you guys. And so I’ve been asked this a lot lately, as new members have joined, and they’re like, hey, what do you do? First of all, the quick wins are tracked in the pharmacy profit roadmap, the quick wins section is really an expanded version of this monthly mastermind. So each of these topics that I’m going to be talking about are one of the quick wins. But there’s, there’s a lot more in the Prop pharmacy profit roadmap, and these are things that that I do these are things that I have found successful doesn’t necessarily mean that you know, you have to do them, or you have to do them all you’re doing just like me, they’re just ideas. And I like them, because they are low cost, easy to implement, you know, there’s not a huge barrier to success, you know, remote patient monitoring, fantastic program, some of our members are killing it, they’re doing justice, January, they’re up to over 20,000 a month in recurring revenue. I mean, like, that’s amazing. But those don’t happen overnight. Those gotta, you know, you got to work on and you got to find doctors, you got to get the patients, you know, there’s there’s some hard work there, there’s a lot of reward. But there’s hard work. And so I really wanted to highlight some things that are not as much hard work, but still really good high reward. So that’s really what today’s going to be about. So I’m going to share screen, I did create just a PowerPoint, just to keep us all on track. So let me share my screen here. And then we will go into such flu. Okay, so these are the four things I do to increase profits in my pharmacy. I know the email went out and it was three, but add one. So you guys are getting the bonus on there. So first one is optimizing pricing tables. I’ve talked about this a lot. Again, you know, these are things that you might have heard about, but I want to make sure that we can we have a conversation about them. And I think when I’m in the presentation mode, I don’t see your guys’s comments. Um, so my staff can kind of look at the there’s any questions or whatnot. So just an FYI. But this was something that I thought was kind of standard, like, there wasn’t really anything you could do to increase your your, you know, PBM reimbursements, I was always taught it, I’m not even sure how I was taught, it wasn’t like it was in school, I don’t know, it’s kind of like this culture of, you know, pharmacy ownership of the vernacular and the discussions that you know, there’s kind of one way of doing it, and it was like, Bill, the highest amount to the PBM like Bill $1,000 for the Senate grill. And that way you can get the most reimbursement for that listen to print. Like that was that was the logic that I was taught, and it sounds good, you know, if I’m Bill 1000, and they’ll allow 15 Then I’ll at least get my 15 but if I Bill 14, and they allow 15, then I’m missing $1 And getting $1 less, so it makes sense to build bill a higher amount. And about two years ago, I had a conversation with Robbie Stokes and Robbie Stokes, and his wife Angela owned a pharmacy for many, many, many years. And when they sold their pharmacy, he got into some of this software and some of this other stuff and you know, started having some aha was and he called me and he like, you know, presented it to me and I I was like I don’t get it doesn’t make sense. I was always taught this one thing and you’re telling me something different. And something different was billing just the highest amount isn’t the best way to optimize it, that actually being smart about it and using algorithms and you know, all this high end stuff is actually Be a better way. And I didn’t believe them. Yeah, you know, I’m, I know people see it that way. But I’m kind of a skeptic at heart, I generally it’s like, I need proof. So I said, Well, let me do it, here’s this, here’s the deal, I’ll give me a money back guarantee, you pay me we’ll do it, we’ll do the things. And let’s see if there’s a change. I said, You know what I can get behind that. So we implemented it in one of my pharmacies at the time, I owned a pharmacy in Texas. And so we implemented it in my Texas pharmacy. And in three months, we went from $13.06, I think was our average margin per prescription to $17.42, I believe it was, it was just over $4, we increased, we didn’t do anything different. In terms of like the pharmacy, we didn’t like, you know, the volume in the, the drugs and stuff didn’t dramatically change, like the pharmacy had been there for several years. You know, it wasn’t like anything changed. And so the only thing we really did was Robbie’s program. And, um, you know, my mind was blown. And I guess like looking back when, as I started to analyze it that, of course, the PBMs are more complicated and just build the highest amount. I mean, why in the world, would they be simple like that nothing they do is simple. So it kind of made sense that a complicated solution would be the right way to go for a complicated problem. So anyways, um, so since then, I’ve implemented Rob’s program and all of our pharmacies, when we buy a new pharmacy, you know, there’s obviously a date it becomes ours. And so before that we, you know, send over the pricing table send all over the data that Robbie needs, Robbie does his things, he tells our technicians to the Robbie never gets in your system or anything like that. So there’s, you know, don’t worry about HIPAA and all that kind of stuff, Robbie just sends the pricing table information, our technicians input it into the system, the day we own the pharmacy, and we literally do it from day one. And it has worked beautifully. I have referred a ton of pharmacies to Robbie. And it’s all worked beautifully. And the thing is, if you get a money back guarantee, we kind of started that with my own skeptic skepticism. And for being a diversifier X member, you get a money back guarantee to so that is like the number one thing I do. The very first thing is to optimize the pricing tables. The way it works probably is like when you pay, it’s good for like a year. And then like you’ll refresh it and reduce the pricing table. You know, you sign up again for another year. And so it’s the it’s one bill that we’re happy to pay every year on on our annual renew, because we continue, we feel to get value out of that stuff. That is number one. I do have the questions up here. I was able to open the chat, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to but so if you have any questions, you can chat it in there, or unmute and just cut into whatever I’m saying if y’all have any, any questions, I don’t see any, but I’m gonna take a drink.
All right. So on to number two. So that’s the first thing we do on day one, the next thing we do is we sign up for direct billing for workers comp. And for I would say the last 10 or 15 years independent pharmacy has really been running away from workers comp, for a couple of reasons. One, the profits aren’t good. I mean, that’s number one. Number two, with all the issues of control drugs, and this and that, and a lot of times worker comp is is you know, a muscle relaxer a pain pill, a sleeping pill, you know, those kinds of things. You know, the ratios of controls and stuff, pharmacies just kind of push that business away. It’s like, it wasn’t worth the hassle, especially when I’m not making any money. And then the just the complexity of sometimes it’s a little bit different, you got to get date of injury, you’ve got to get you know, there you got to get some a little different information than maybe a typical prescription. So a lot of pharmacies have just ran away from workers comp. And I learned many years ago, in my first pharmacy was probably back in and I learned accidentally, as as we often learn lessons in life, right? I learned accidentally about billing direct, and what workers comp compensation insurances pay. And I mean, the actual insurance is not the PBM not the processor, but what the insurance is actually pay and what pharmacies actually get when there’s a PBM in the middle. And so this happens back in like 2009 and I had a teacher who had gotten injured on the job, and for some reason I was calling the adjuster like I was calling I don’t even quite remember why. But there was, I think it was oh, I think it was because it was for brace like it was for a brace not like a drug. And we needed to know like, how they needed it to be billed or something it was it was something, you know, just a little out of the ordinary. And I got on the phone, the adjuster that was really nice adjuster, which is rare and in that world, and they’re like, you know, helped me out, they’re like, Oh, well just send me the bill directly. And I was like, oh, okay, I’ll mail it to you, what’s your address, you know, in the game meeting address, then yada, yada. And I sent off the bill. They paid me what I built. And I was like, really weird. Like, did you mean to do that at all, like, I was like, this is, you know, strange, because, and, you know, in talking with this adjuster, and you know, and going through some other claims, I realized that they had been paying these really, really high amounts. But yet, when I was billing through 10, Masis, or my matrix, I was getting really, really low amounts, and kind of learned this discrepancy. And this is right around the same time, when I was really understanding spread pricing. You know, this is probably the year before I started my own PBM there because of I learned all this stuff I learned. And so it just became very eye opening. And so what I started doing was for all workers comp claims, I started calling the adjusters and asking, you know, where do I send the bill, I didn’t really ask permission, per se, I kind of like forced myself in, um, and that went and saved didn’t work 100% of the time, we would get some, you know, not so nice adjusters and, you know, say, Bill it to the, you know, this insurance, here’s this and, you know, and then other times, I would get really nice ones. And sometimes I would just force my way, and I can be known to be a little aggressive sometimes. And, but I did draft skilled workers. And I didn’t, you know, I thought I discovered this, like, you know, little fountain of gold, if you will, and it was pretty cool. And, you know, so when I first sold my pharmacy, and you know this and that, and it took a lot of work, it took legwork, and let’s be honest, not not a lot of pharmacy owners will have the time or the ability to do that. But I’ve learned that there’s companies that actually do this for you. And so of course, I always had to do everything the hard way. And then somebody comes along, and there’s an easy button. And so the easy button for direct billing for workers comp is I love string care. String care is my, probably my favorite company, there are several out there that do do it. There’s a reason I like string care is because they remind me of my aggressiveness. They’re they’re like pit bulls. They don’t just take no for an answer. Whereas some of the other billing companies, I think, because they’re a lot bigger and a lot busier, if something’s difficult, they’re just like, Ah, you’re just gonna have to build a PBN where stream care like fights for every claim. And so that’s just why I personally have an affinity for for stream care. But students want to get a pharmacy, we sign up for stream care, we get the employees trained on it, it’s super easy, but stream care handles all of the training, they’ll tell you how to set it up in your system. It’s basically like a dummy bin. So it sets up a bin, it transmits the data to stream care, stream care then takes that information and they do all the legwork, they call the adjusters, they found out the billing addresses, they, you know, do all those kinds of things. And then you can get paid the full allowed rate by your legislature, not what the PBM wants to pay. So generally, you know, a PBM is or aw up minus 87% or, you know, somewhere up there sometimes even minus 90%, whereas most workers comp insurers which is either the state or an insurer actually pay full aw P and even in some states, it’s aw p plus. And like crazy. So you go from aw p minus 87% to full aw up. And it’s an amazing amount and it’s profitable, and it’s not costing the insurer anymore, they’re not paying any more it’s just the PDM isn’t getting money and I think we’re all ok with the PBM doesn’t get money. So anyways, that’s the first thing to so first thing we do is we added into our system, any patient that we fill we search our system for the bid numbers for like 10 assists and my matrix and all of that we convert them to string care so the so the patient doesn’t know any difference, they don’t get any different level of service, they still don’t pay for their drugs, you know, all of those kinds of things. And, um, and it’s all happens on the back end. So we convert those patients and then we go look to grow, grow it, you know, once once we got going and so that right there, I mean, even just getting four or five patients of workers comp usually means a couple $1,000 in profit, so you don’t need it. ton of patience for it to make a big difference to your bottom line. So there is a question that popped up over here. Any idea if they’re able to build in New York lit in New York yet? I’d have to look at my state list. So I have a state list of stream care that most are green. So it’s green in like 38 or 39. States, there’s five or six states that are yellow, and then the other seven, or whatever it is that are red. So I’d have to look at lab Look at mine, and it’s in Google Drive. I’ll do that. Because I don’t know off the top of my head about New York. And then also, what about no fault? I’m not exactly sure it should be my no fault. Um, are you talking like personal injury or whatnot, but stream care does do a lot of the other billings are like for stuff like that. So you can you can talk to them about that. Oh, for car accident claims. So Car Accident Claims actually work a lot the same, we always just direct bill, the auto claim carry insurance. It works very similar the way string care does a lot of those other types of buildings. So they can they can do those for you, too. I’m kind of one of those people. Like I don’t mind doing some of the like, tedious work. But yeah, you can build Clark Clark car claims the same way where you drive to build the insurer. And then they send you a check directly. So it can work the same way for that personal injury to like car accidents, personal injury, all of that. Good question. All right. Any other questions on direct billing worker’s comp? already? So, um, oh, Heather said stream care still read in New York. So from what I think I remember about New York and just don’t quote me on this. But is there’s very strong laws that protect basically the PBMs to force people to use them. Is is what I think it is. And so you can direct bill Bill often pay the first bill, but then they’ll say the next time you have to bill the PBM. So if I’m remembering, right, but I haven’t maybe we can reach out to Lloyd’s Lloyd’s, the the main guy over at stream care and just get an update if there’s been any changes with New York. So all right, thank you card program. I just did the Pioneer podcast earlier today. And we actually talked a lot about the Thank You card program. So many people dismiss this because it’s simple, and it’s easy. And it’s low tech, and it’s low cost. And they’re like it can’t possibly work can’t possibly be affected. But this is another thing that we implement right away.
And so this is what the employees and so this is kind of in tangent with if the employees don’t have a bonus program, to now start a bonus program, and the Thank You card is one of the first things that they can get bonus on. Or if they do have a bonus program to stick this right inside. They’re already operating bonus program. So what the Thank You card program is is for every shift that an employee works, they need to do a handwritten thank you card. And the handwritten thank you card doesn’t technically need to be a thank you. But just a card to an employee or an employer card to a patient that’s mailed in the mail, like officially snail mail stamped and mailed to the patient. And it could be anything from Hey, I saw your birthday next week, you know, happy early birthday, or could just be thank you for coming in. Thank you for choosing our pharmacy, it was great to see you. Congrats on your vacation. You know what, whatever that message is, we just want it to be something that’s personal to that patient. And it’s one per day. And the way that I tell my employees is you know, if you work three shifts a week, you got to do three, if you do work, five shifts and week you got to do five, all your cards need to be done by the end of the week. So I get it, you have a crazy Monday, maybe somebody calls in sick, you don’t have time to do your card Monday night before it’s time to go home. No problem. Just get it done by Friday, make sure they’re all in the mail by Friday, because part of this program is the patient was into the pharmacy or they got a prescription build and within a few days a card follows you know it you don’t want it to be like oh, they visited us three months ago and you know, now all of a sudden I got a card. That doesn’t really work. So it’s got to be close to the you know, interaction, the most recent interaction that the patient had with the pharmacy so I give them till the end of the week. So I have some employees that literally do want every day and they like staying on top of it. I above Let’s save it all up and do it one, just pick a day of the week they do the mall, whatever works. And so what they do is they have a thank you card log, and they have to write who they spent one, two on the log, and they turn that in at the end of the month. And then for our employees, we do a $200 bonus, if they complete their thank you cards, and it’s an it’s all or nothing, they gotta get them all, or it’s nothing, if they do half, if they worked five shifts a week, and they only did three a week or something like that, like, it’s all or nothing. So they got to hit them off, and they get $200 a month. And that’s a pretty good bonus for really not that much work. And the reason we’re willing to do it is it has such a profound impact on your patients that your patients appreciate it very, very much. And I in the discussion with Pioneer earlier today was you know, does the younger generation appreciate it? Or is it just the older ones? Frankly, from my experience, everyone appreciates it. Even the young kids, you know, come in, you know, 20 year old, they’re like me, can you see a car, like, that’s cool, like I’ve got a card like you know, since my grandma you know, or something like it’s still cool, it’s still different, it’s still breaking the normal, kind of, you know, flow of their day in their experience with with people and companies. So I think it’s definitely worth it doesn’t matter what the age person you’re sending it to. I think it’s exactly the it hits where we want it. Some people might be more emotional about it than others. But I think it always hits that cool factor of you know, being different and being building that relationship with your patient. So that thank you card program. So that’s what we start, it gives us a reason to give a bonus to employees if they’re not currently given a bonus, which is always good for, you know, new owners, even if you’re not a new owner, or anything like that you’ve been looking at to start a bonus program, but you didn’t exactly know how to do it or what to focus on. I would do this, make your thank you card program. And I will warn you, your employees will push back. And then you may be like it’s a card, like Why are you pushing back specially if they’re Millennials like writing a note and physically reaching out to somebody, it’s just very awkward for them. It’s just a whole generational thing. It’s okay, they’ll get over it, they like the $200 and they’ll get better at it in a few months. It’s a habit and it’s no big deal. But just let you know that you might get some weird pushback, and you may not understand it, just know that you know, kids are different these days, and but they will survive and they can do it. So already. Last but not least, um, that we do is I’m a big believer, I forget what the whole phenomenon is, but the you know, the 1% improvements every day, you know, and at the end of the year, you end up you know, 300 Plus, you know, percent better always look for just small improvements. You know, we we all love the homeruns we all love the Grand Slams that like dramatically change our life. But let’s face it, it’s being consistent on the little things that really make a big difference that really do add up. And so number four is you know, sell one thing with every transaction. So my cashiers who the other side of their bonus was about increasing OTC sales. We needed to get our OTC sales, the mean they were dismal. And the pharmacy robot had a beautiful front end, we carried all kinds of fantastic products. And it just people were walking in the door picking prescription and turn around and walking out. And that’s something that you can carry the sexy products you can carry all the things but they do not just walk off the shelf by themselves. It doesn’t doesn’t matter, you know what it is except for you know, everyone’s while you get a hot toy or something that you know people will come in and buy but yeah, otherwise you got to work on it. You got to you got to remind people, you got to stop them and say, Hey, did you know we carry this thing are you know, are you tired all the time? Maybe you should take this. And so what we what we started doing my rule was is you have to just ask everybody just sell one thing. You have to ask every transaction you have to ask somebody to buy something. And I did this long, long ago in my very first pharmacy. And some employees. All they did was sell Burt’s Bees. I had this girl Megan we called her Burt’s Bees queen, because that’s all she was really comfortable with. She wasn’t comfortable recommending a settlement didn’t care how much we educated her taught her she wasn’t really you know, but she could sell a ton of Burt’s Bees. That’s fine. I don’t care. I don’t care if you sell chapstick. Just sell one thing, every transaction like that is their goal. Um, they can’t control if somebody says yes, but they can control if they ask somebody, is there something you need? We taught them the related products, you know, if they bind antibiotic, the probiotic if you know those kinds of things, absolutely. If they’re getting a kid medicine, do they need, you know, infant Tylenol? And you can also do the non related stuff. Like I said, the Burt’s Bees like she sold chapstick, Burt’s Bee chopsticks, everybody didn’t matter who they were. And so if you can really get their mindset, that is just one thing, like you’re just asking every transaction, then it becomes part of a habit that they create. You know, it’s kind of like the Would you like fries with that? The only reason they sell fries is because their people are constantly asked, and a lot of people say no, but a lot of people say yes. So it’s like, Hey, do you need any hand sanitizer? Do you need chapstick? Do you need some sunscreen? Do you need some cough medicine? You know, it’s like, all you have to do is ask. You can control that part. You can’t control the outcome, but you’re never going to get the yeses unless you ask. So a okay to get told no, no problem with that nobody feels bad. Because you have the opportunity for them to say yes. And so the really the training with your employees is you want to create as many opportunities as possible for somebody to say yes, and it’s a numbers game. So if you ask everybody, and when they start asking everybody, and they do that day, after day, and week, after week, month after month, guess what they’re gonna get better, they’re gonna get better at asking, they’re gonna get instead of Do you want some chapstick? They’re gonna be like, Hey, do you want our new you know, and, and sleep products, I’m hearing amazing things about it, you know, like, they’re going to up their game and be able to talk to people more and that only comes with repetition, you know, it only comes with at bats, will their batting average get better. And so that’s one that it doesn’t cost anything but time in order to like, talk to your employees, we’ve actually just created and put in the membership a gotcha. Remember, the title of it leads to Baker was the you know, if they’re buying this, get this, like the recommended products list, I think it was maybe. So we have a little list, you can have your your employees print that out. It’s in Canvas, you can edit it, you know, if you don’t carry something on there, you know, customize it, make it your own, so that your employees are like, Oh, they’re buying posted, guess what they might be pins, like those two things go together. That’s okay. And so you can give them a little cheat sheet to work that until they become comfortable with you know, kind of come up with some things on their own. So that’s the for like simple, low cost things that that I do actually, I don’t even think like, so.
Optimizing pricing tables does have a cost, I think it’s, I think it’s around 4000 Or maybe 4500. To do that it’s good for the whole year, and you get a don’t a money back guarantee on that. The direct really doesn’t cost you anything, it doesn’t cost you anything to sign up, they only take their fee out of what you actually get paid. So you have to get paid on something, then they take their fee. The Thank You card program is a very little cost, I recommend getting custom cards printed, we have some diversify ones down there. I’ll show you. So we have custom ones we get like this. So they’re just single sided things. So logo on the front, we can write our Thank you stuff on the back, I put them in some brightly colored envelopes for the pharmacy. Um, our pharmacies colors are red, so I just ordered red envelopes from Amazon. And that way, they all come in a colored envelope, the custom cards I get from Jessica at promo sense.com I forget how much it is, this is like 200 cards in here, I’d have one open this packet, but it’s very inexpensive. 60 bucks, maybe something like that. But just a promo suns.com. So very low cost cost of a stamp to do that. And then the number four is only really your cost of time to like talk to your employees and train them and just start working with them to get them comfortable to always always ask for something extra with every single transaction. And their goal is just one thing with with every transaction. So that is the four things that I do on my pharmacies to help boost profitability, you know, without having a whole lot of a whole lot effort, some effort, not a whole lot of effort, and also not a whole whole lot of money, either. So what questions do you guys have? Feel free to do you can put in the chat. You can unmute you can hop on camera if you want Uh, but what what questions you guys have
I don’t see any.
Lisa, I want to say something about the thank you cards for pharmacies that have marketers or the owners are doing marketing activities. People of all across the board love thank you cards. So doctors love thank you cards. receptionists love thank you card. So don’t just think in terms of patients, but anybody that is doing anything worth thanking for your business people super enjoyed them.
Yep, absolutely. We had our marketers instead of sending it to patients, they sent it to the people that they visited or talk to so Yep, absolutely. Everybody can send a thank you card with somebody that they interacted with. Because really, those are their customers, you know, for, let’s say, a marketer, really, the doctor’s offices are their customers, you know, that they’re building that relationship with so. And Lisa Baker popped in some links in there for the Thank You card program and OTC guide for recommendations. So let’s see, um, I don’t see any other questions. If you watch this recording later, and you have some questions, I’m on top of it, our community checks is the best place to do it under general discussions. myself or one of the team will get on there getting get you answered and get you taken care of. Make sure that you know, we get we get everything you need. So hope you found this helpful. If you’re not doing these four things in your pharmacy, I think this is the best place to start. Like you can bang these out in a week and really started making a difference in your pharmacy. So if you need help with these, please schedule a call with Mr. Baker or Mike, they can walk you through any of these options. Don’t forget to get custom marketing materials as part of your memberships. If you want to start marketing your workers comp, we’ve got great workers comp flyers, you can always customize on yourself and Canva or you can ask us to customize them for you. And so just lean into us as as much as you need to in order to make sure that you successfully implement these different ideas. So we’re literally here to help you at any time. So all writing I think that was it everybody. I will let you all go and we will see you next time. So have a great rest of your day. Bye bye