Script Health

07/25/2024

We get it — it can be hard to imagine a world where low-acuity care is handled by pharmacies rather than urgent care or a P*P. Fortunately, you don’t need to imagine: in Canada, it’s rapidly becoming reality.

In Nova Scotia, Canada, there’s been a 10% decline in emergency room visits in the few short years since new regulation enabled pharmacists to expand their care offerings nationally in January 2023.

In Ontario, over 1 MILLION minor ailment assessments have taken place at community pharmacies since then.

“These numbers illustrate that Canadians are increasingly turning to their pharmacists for care that they otherwise may have sought elsewhere, including emergency rooms” said Danielle Paes, PharmD, who serves as the chief pharmacist officer for the Canadian Pharmacists Association.

The evidence is clear: when pharmacists are enabled to practice at the top of their licenses, patients are more than happy to take them up on their offer of convenient, low-cost care for common conditions.

And with America’s largest pharmacy organizations following suit, this kind of transformation coming to America isn’t a pipe dream. It’s really a matter of time.

The more we think aboot it, the more we wonder which other Canadian innovations will be coming soon to take America by storm…poutine, anyone?

Launch some clinical services, eh? https://buff.ly/3dIl4ex

Sorry, here’s the source for that data: https://buff.ly/3yb16mM

07/23/2024

Today, we’re announcing our first PMS integration built directly into Scripted with RXQ.

Key Scripted features like clinical service administration and management, appointment management, and synchronization of patient records will be available directly within Liberty RXQ.

And there’s more: we’re integrating into several other PMS's as well, with plans to launch by the end of this year.

Check out the full announcement on our site: https://buff.ly/4cPd7xa

07/17/2024

BREAKING: The FTC just released an interim report with their initial findings on PBMs — the numbers are damning.

This just-released report is part of the FTC’s ongoing investigation into PBM business practices, which may result in regulation or new legislation curtailing the power they wield.

Here are some key points:

1. PBMs inflate drug costs while providing little additional benefit — in some case, drug costs have inflated by as much as 40x.�

2. The three largest PBMs manage nearly 80% of all prescriptions filled in the United States, leading to significant control over drug prices and access. �

3. Opaque business practices mean PBMs can drive up costs for generics and biosimilars while excluding PBM-friendly medications and manufacturers from price hikes.�

4. In addition to controlling drug prices, PBMs may also steer patients to PBM-affiliated pharmacies, which receive higher reimbursement rates. How much higher? For just two cancer drugs, PBM-affiliated pharmacies received an additional $1.6 BILLION in under 3 years.�

5. These practices contributed to 10% of ALL INDEPENDENT RETAIL PHARMACIES IN THE US CLOSING between 2013 and 2022.

Even as vocal PBM critics, the full scope of their damage on small and medium pharmacy businesses is shocking to read.

With any luck, this investigation by the FTC will fuel public outrage about PBM practices and enable new regulations to curtail their power — but we think pharmacies can’t afford to wait for Congress to act.

Scripted is enabling independent pharmacies to get better reimbursements by side-stepping PBMs entirely — billing to medical insurance can result in reimbursement increases of tens or hundreds of dollars per service, and reduce your pharmacy’s reliance on greedy PBMs.

We don’t need to wait for the FTC to stop the PBMs. We can stop doing business with them TODAY. For some pharmacies, it may be the difference between success and failure.

Ditch PBMs and join the Scripted movement: https://buff.ly/3extkh9

The full PBM staff report: https://buff.ly/3Lu3x6X

07/09/2024

The CEO of Walgreens: “We are at a point where the current pharmacy model is not sustainable”. Read it again.

In an earnings call late last month, Walgreens CEO Tim Wentworth admitted to his shareholders what we’ve been saying for years: that the reimbursement-based business model most pharmacies rely on is not sustainable for the future.

For anyone who hasn’t been paying attention to the pharmacy industry, this should be a huge wake-up call.

On that same call, Wentworth added, “the retail pharmacy experience will be more important to the healthcare industry in the years ahead, but it will evolve… We’re enhancing our pharmacy services, like immunizations, to track more patients through an improved experience and enhanced digital solutions.”

Translation: Walgreens will plan to rely on advanced services like vaccines, plus new services, to move beyond reimbursements and stay sustainable.

To Wentworth, relying more on clinical services is how Walgreens aims to “[double] down on [their] efforts to define the future of pharmacy in this country”.

We’ve been saying it for years: an industry-wide shift away from prescription reimbursements and toward clinical services is inevitable.

Don’t wait for Walgreens to beat you to market — bring new advanced services to your pharmacy with Scripted. https://buff.ly/3extkh9

07/02/2024

Billing a claim to a PBM via d.0 or to a medical insurance claim can result in shockingly different reimbursement rates. Knowing the most important differences can help you choose the billing method that most benefits your business.

If your pharmacy doesn’t yet bill to medical insurance, you may be surprised just how much more money you could receive on common services like immunizations. Medical billing tends to result in much higher reimbursement rates, and you won’t encounter any DIR-like fees.

That said, medical reimbursement tends to take longer to receive than a reimbursement from d.0 — expect to wait a month or longer for your reimbursements. For certain services, it may benefit your business to submit reimbursements to d.0 for quicker access to the reimbursement funds.

Pharmacies with Scripted can bill to both d.0 and medical insurance plans, so you can earn more on your reimbursements and make the right strategic choices on how and when to bill. Get started with medical billing: https://buff.ly/3znxsLk

Or, check out our comprehensive medical billing and claims submission guide for free: https://buff.ly/47r97zo

07/01/2024

Walgreens just made two major announcements: that they’re cutting back on their investment into primary care businesses operated primarily by physicians, and are increasing efforts to credential pharmacists instead.

Most publications are reporting these separately, but to us, these announcements could not be more deeply interdependent.

What we’re really seeing here is the biggest players in the pharmacy industry finally realizing what we’ve been shouting from the rooftops for years: that the best way to expand care offerings at pharmacies is to empower pharmacists to practice at the tops of their licenses.

It seems obvious to us, but organizations like CVS and Walgreens have been spent years hiring in additional provider staff to expand the care offerings at their pharmacies. It’s a huge investment — especially when qualified, competent pharmacists are literally already working in those pharmacies.

Factor in the looming primary care provider shortage, and the benefit of enabling pharmacists to handle low-acuity care directly makes even more sense.

Patients already see pharmacists as trustworthy care providers — enabling them to handle low-risk common conditions will increase access to care and increase revenue at the same time.

Walgreens is now a bit behind as they work to transition their business toward their pharmacists — but your pharmacy doesn’t have to be.

Credential your pharmacists and add new services to your pharmacy with Scripted before Walgreens beats you to it: https://buff.ly/3extkh9

Sources for those stories: https://buff.ly/4ciaDXS / https://buff.ly/3W5QDCo

06/21/2024

Exorbitantly overcharging for drugs. Billions in hidden fees. Undisclosed conflicts of interest. The New York Times’ latest investigation is a stunning indictment of PBMs, whose complex and opaque practices are costing pharmacies, patients, and government programs like Medicare billions of dollars a year.

PBMs manage prescriptions for over 200 million Americans. They claim to lower drug costs — but according to the Times, that’s just not true.

In many cases, PBMs abuse their position in the American healthcare system to introduce hidden fees and drive up costs for pharmacies and patients alike.

They’re not just pushing small pharmacies to the brink of insolvency with absurdly low reimbursements — they’re also using tactics like rebate systems and opaque subsidiaries to introduce staggering markups on common medications and promote medications where they have a financial interest.

PBMs are a blight on our health system, adding layers of complexity and obfuscation to line their own pockets, often at the direct expense of the providers and pharmacists who actually perform the labor and the patients who rely on them for care.

We join the overwhelming calls for regulation and transparency — but honestly, we believe that advocating for regulation alone is NOT enough.

We believe that pharmacies deserve an alternative to reliance on greedy PBMs TODAY — so we’re expanding pharmacists’ ability to get credentialed and bill their services to medical insurance instead of PBMs.

Our lawmakers and regulators absolutely need to act to put a stop to the PBMs’ greedy practices — but while we’re waiting, let’s also reduce our dependency on the PBMs ourselves by getting pharmacists reimbursed at much higher rates right now via medical insurance.

Reduce your dependency on PBM greed: scripted.co/pharmacists

The full Times report, which is really worth a read: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/21/business/prescription-drug-costs-pbm.html

06/19/2024

New in Forbes: Illinois becomes the latest state to embrace legislative reform enabling pharmacists to prescribe more treatments directly to patients.

Across the country, pharmacists, patients, and lobbying groups have been working to expand regulatory limitations preventing pharmacists from practicing at the top of their licenses. ��Now, a group called the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, representing both independent pharmacists and large retail drugstores, is making sure Illinois patients can get common-sense access to low-acuity treatments at their local pharmacies.

It’s an urgent reform: workforce shortages in the healthcare industry necessitate spreading basic care responsibilities to other providers, such as pharmacists. Primary care providers will get to focus on more complex cases, while patients enjoy faster access to more affordable care.

We’re always motivated by seeing legislation advance that expands pharmacists’ ability to serve their patients. But these changes can take a long time — that’s why Scripted can help expand your pharmacy’s service offerings in all 50 states TODAY.

Turn your pharmacy into a community health resource: https://buff.ly/3extkh9



Source: https://buff.ly/3xt6eCj

06/11/2024

Wyoming pharmacist interviewed by AP: “I’m working for free a lot…I love to serve the community. But I kind of resent having to do that because of large corporations, huge pharmacy benefit managers, that are making millions of dollars a year.”

A powerful piece by Devi Shastri in the Associated Press highlights how devastatingly low reimbursements set by PBMs are crushing rural pharmacies.

Pharmacies in rural areas fill crucial gaps in our health system, ensuring that many Americans don’t go without needed care.

But with margins crushed so severely by greedy PBMs, staying in business and continuing to serve these communities is becoming a more and more tenuous existence for pharmacists in Wyoming and beyond.

According to the article, some patients drive up to five hours to access care at this pharmacy that they cannot access anywhere else — and yet 25% of the prescriptions this pharmacy fills are reimbursed below cost.

This is beyond unsustainable. This is why we say we need a real alternative to reliance on PBM reimbursements — an entirely new business model for the community pharmacy.

Patients need this care. Pharmacists want to continue providing it. But PBMs are making that prospect more and more untenable.

We say it’s — time to spread the word that what these PBMs are doing is ethically unjustifiable, and that submitting many treatments to medical insurance plans can mean the difference between pharmacies shuttering and staying open.

Ditch PBM greed and DIR fees and bring medical billing to your pharmacy: https://buff.ly/3yF5REM

Source: https://buff.ly/3RmMGWW

06/04/2024

Here’s an example of just how huge the difference between d.0 and medical insurance reimbursement rates can be for your pharmacy: $21,000 PER YEAR.

This number is based on real internal data — we averaged data about flu vaccines that real pharmacists shared with our new medical billing calculator on scripted.co/paybacktime.

Running the numbers, we found that this “average” pharmacy could be missing over $20,000 on flu vaccine reimbursements ALONE if they don’t have the option to bill to medical insurance.

It gets worse: according to our data, one pharmacist’s answers revealed their pharmacy may be losing $57,000 PER YEAR on flu vaccines if they can’t bill to medical insurance.

This huge discrepancy in reimbursement rates is an outrage.

Other providers, like RNs, already get these medical insurance reimbursement rates for administering the EXACT SAME VACCINES we pharmacists do. So how does it make sense that we get paid so much less?

The answer is simple: PBM greed. The big PBMs think they can squeeze our margins and crush our businesses as much as they please — but we have had ENOUGH.

It’s — get a custom estimate for your pharmacy on our website, then learn how to bring medical billing to your pharmacy and get the full pay you deserve for the vaccines you administer. scripted.co/paybacktime

05/20/2024

Despite what some skeptics might tell you, allowing pharmacists to prescribe directly to patients is NOT a radical proposal. Since 2023 in B.C., Canada, it’s the law of the land. So what really happens when to patients?

New data shows that a whopping 90% of patients approve of pharmacists’ expanded prescriptive authority in the year since new regulations have taken effect.

NINETY percent. As Americans, it can be challenging to imagine 90% of our populace agreeing on anything, but Canadian pharmacists have made it happen for B.C. residents.

That’s not all: 73% of polled patients reported high confidence levels in pharmacists ordering lab tests, and 79% have confidence in pharmacists offering point-of-care testing.

They also stated convenience and trust were top motivating reasons for seeking care at a community pharmacy.

The data tells a clear story: common sense, low-risk advanced services at community pharmacies benefit patients AND pharmacists. ��Bring them to your pharmacy: https://buff.ly/3extkh9

Source for those numbers: https://buff.ly/44OTylq

Skip the doctor's trip. With Scripted, you can get a prescription for common conditions right at your local pharmacy.