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The GCR Wake-Up Call: How Small Buying Decisions Are Crushing (or Saving) Pharmacy Margin | TWIRx · Pharmacy Podcast Network

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: You are listening to the global network of podcasters dedicated
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: to the pharmacy profession. Welcome to the Pharmacy Podcast Network.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Now here's our host and founder of the Pharmacy Podcast Network, Todd.
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: You're welcome to this weekend.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Pharmacy Tworks is the number one weekly talk show about
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: the profession of pharmacy.
• 0:52
  Speaker 4: Hey hey, hey, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: All right, I'm not gonna I'm not going to subject
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: you to some such horrible rapping. Not a rapper. We'll
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: never be a rapper. Welcome to this week in Pharmacy.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: It is February six, twenty twenty six. If you didn't
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: know it was February already, it's February twenty twenty six.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: It's going too best already. That's the way it goes.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: I am excited to be here with you this week
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: in Pharmacy. We have a lot going on, a lot
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: to cover. We have two really special interviews that I
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: know that you're going to enjoy today. I enjoyed talking
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: with both of these dynamic and individuals and actually three
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: special people. And we're going to be talking with Johnny
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: Kello from the Sea. He's the CEO of match r X,
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: again he always brings us great information and ce Dino
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: who's his guest pharmacy operator pharmacist, and then a shout
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: out to Jonathan Adley, he's the CEO of tj M Labs.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: You haven't heard about TJM Labs. You got to look
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: into them. It's all about artificial intelligence and the impact
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: on pharmacy and the pharmacy world. I'm excited to be
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: here with you. Like I said, there is so much
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: happening in our profession. If you are at all in
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: that boat that you think the profession is in disarray,
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: it's coming out of disarray and there's so much opportunity
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: out there right now. We're going to be talking about
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: a lot of it today. But first up, Workforce Strategy
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: for Independent Pharmacy Owners. What a great podcast that we
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: did with CEO of your Raal Pharma, Steven Beckman, who's
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: the host of The Executive Dose, and he digs into
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: this through a partnership with the Independent Pharmacy Cooperative and
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: their insights from Kelly as well as a pharmacy owner
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: Build Drilling, and they really talk about how this makes
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: a big impact the profession as well as to the
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: individual pharmacies or even a chain pharmacy and the importance
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: of workflows, workforce strategy and what that means for you
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: as a pharmacist and pharmacy owner. A shout out to
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: the Pharmacy Podcast Network. Thanks so much for a great
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: week of content. If you don't know, we're working with
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: GRX Marketing and Finch Marketing and you know what a
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: SWAT analysis is your strengths, your weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: Probably got that wrong, but mastering your SWAT analysis. Definitely
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: take a listen to that. It's a good show. Tamar Rugels,
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: doctor Rugles, is back and she has Debra Milto on
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: from from the Indiana, Pennsylvania area. And Deborah is a
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: long time friend of mine. She's the past president of
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: the American Society Consultant Pharmacists. I've worked with Deborah for
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: a short period of time directly and directly from Diamond
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: Pharmacy Services up in Indiana, Pennsylvania. It was great to
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: work with them over the years, and.
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: I'm just proud to know.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: These people and what they're doing in the profession and
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: how they're making an impact to our profession. So take
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: a listen to that and it's very inspiring to listen
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: to the conversation with Deborah and with Tamrun. I really
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: enjoy it. I enjoy listening to the stars of our profession.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: That's why I do what I do, all right, The
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: fifty most influential people in pharmacy, the awards, we've broken
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: that down into several pieces. We're putting one out every Saturday.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: This was episode two of that four part series. If
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: you haven't listened, just the awards were so much fun
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: and we celebrate so many people that have made impacts
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: to our profession and I rise them up. I raised
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: them up and say thank you to all of you
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: who participated and who voted especially, and just thank you
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: so much. So February six, twenty twenty six, what's happening
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: in the industry. Well, first of all, retail report comes
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: out today from Credence Research Incorporated, and it says the
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: retail pharmacy market to reach one point nine seven trillion
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: by twenty thirty two, driven by the aging population, digital
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: health expansion. Once again from Credence, This just came out
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: today and it goes into the breakdown of their markets,
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: the breakdown of the percentage of growth as well as
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: they list some key growth drivers reshaping retail pharmacy, the
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: aging demographics, the strength of technology in place accelerated by
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: artificial intelligence, and e prescribing, e pharmacies, digital health. Just
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: a shout out to our listeners, how are you going
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: to play a part of this? How are you and
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: chain pharmacy or your independent pharmacy, your health systems, your
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: mail orders these online? How are you going to capitalize?
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: And we think we have people, we have organizations, we
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: have associations involved in this network for you to capitalize on.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: If you ever wonder about any of that, you can
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: reach out to us. You can reach out to me,
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: you can even reach out to some of our hosts.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: They're all accessible to you and just asking for advice,
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: especially if they're experts in something or one particular space
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: within pharmacy. But I think that's good news. One point
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  Speaker 2: nine trillion as a market, inclusive market by twenty thirty two.
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  Speaker 4: And I'm a small, tiny part of it. All right.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: What about news coming off of the New York Post
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  Speaker 2: just today in the headline is Walmart boost pay for
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  Speaker 2: pharmacy staff with some jobs requiring no college degree. And
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: I don't think this is a surprise to people in
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  Speaker 2: the industry, but it might be to the public of
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: being able to really grow and refine the quality of
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: our pharmacy technicians and our certified pharmacy technicians. We've done
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: several partnerships over the years with Mike Johnston's team over
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: at the National Pharmacy Technician Association. He actually made the
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: Pharmacy fifty list again. And how important our pharmacy techs
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: are in order to grow a new new pharmacy system,
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: a new pharmacy delivery model throughout the country, especially parts
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: of the United States that are suffering without pharmacy services.
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  Speaker 2: And it says the Arkansas based retail giant, which recently
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  Speaker 2: topped one trillion in market capitalization, says it employees about
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  Speaker 2: thirty five thousand pharmacy technicians and fifteen thousand pharmacists across
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: about four thousand, six hundred pharmacies nationwide. Pharmacy Technicians previously
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: earned an average at twenty two dollars an hour, meaning
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  Speaker 2: the new pay scale represents a potential increase of about
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: eighty four percent at the top end.
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  Speaker 4: That is such good news.
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  Speaker 2: This is Walmart said not all pharmacy workers will qualify
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  Speaker 2: for the forty dollars forty dollars and fifty cent per
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  Speaker 2: hour rate, while with salaries varying based on employee credentials
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  Speaker 2: and locations, I still want to say congratulations to those
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: texts that might be listening out there.
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: You did make national news.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: Pharmacy made national news, bringing to attention the quality of person,
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: the quality of work ethic, and the quality of your
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: knowledge and experience as a pharmacy technician.
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: You are not in fast food. You are in healthcare.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: You are in pharmacy care, and you're an extremely important
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: part of the ecosystem of pharmacy. So good news to
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: hear out of drug topics. Just today headline Medicare reforms
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: aim to pay pharmacists for clinical care. Once again, Medicare
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: reforms aim to pay pharmacists for clinical care. And this
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: comes from Jim Lewis. He's the senior director of Policy
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: and Advocacy for the American Society Consultant Pharmacists, and he's
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: quoted in saying that Congress is debating whether or not
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: it's going to pass the funding bill that includes some
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: PBM provisions. There's still a lot more that need to
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: be done. Prevention of vertical integration stuff in the Medicaid space.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: So there's still a lot of work on PBM reform.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: There is a lot of work on PBM reform to do,
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: but we have two massive updates that impact us at
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: a federal and a state level, as well as the FTC.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: I cannot wait to share these with you. It's going
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: to be coming from our friend Greg Ribold, who is
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: the legal lead for APCI as well as our go
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: to person for PBM reform. I cannot wait for you
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: to hear this short interview with Greg to bring us
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: up to date. But major things happening in the pharmacy
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: profession this week.
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: Before we go to Greg.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: Ribold rivaled, I do want to give a shout out
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: to all of those people attending the Pharmacy Profits Summit
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: live in Dallas, Texas, March twenty eighth through twenty ninth.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: Pharmacy Podcast Network will be there. We're going to be
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: covering this with bells On. I love this conference. I've
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: gone to every single one of these since the very beginning.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: I don't know if this is number six or number seven.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: I've been to every single one except for last year
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: where we had to attend the American Pharmacist Association's annual meeting.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: But we are absolutely making this Pharmacy Profit Summit a
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: heads up to pharmacy owners if you really want to
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: attend pharmacy conference that digs down into what really is
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: rubber meets the road and what actually works as pharmacy
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: owners to increase your revenue. This is the conference you
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: want to come to. This is the conference that you
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: want to be a part of and listen to people
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: when they're speaking that they speak from experience, they speak
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: from actually getting it done. And the conference is run
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: and has founded by doctor Lisa Fast, the pharmacy owner
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: has been a friend of mine for years. She's been
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: on the Pharmacy fifty list as an influencer because she is.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: But she's bringing together some people that really make sense
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: and I'm excited to be there, excited to dive into
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: some aspects of business, like Jonathan Adley, who's going to
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: be talking about the truth on.
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: AI.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: What is true as a pharmacist, what is true as
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: a pharmacy operator versus some things. There's a lot of
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: companies out there who will claim they get AI, but
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: I have to say, just like you might say, hey,
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: a lot of companies get podcasting right. So you want
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: a podcast through the pharmacy profession, throughout the pharmacy prefer Russian,
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: and you want to podcast to the consumer group, and
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: you want to partner with an organization that thinks the
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: best of in the highest level of quality of pharmacy
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: care and pharmacy services.
• 13:14
  Speaker 4: Why would you work.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: With an outside organization that knows nothing about pharmacy, doesn't
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: have it in their heart.
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: And that's the way I think of artificial intelligence.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: That's the way I think of Jonathan Adley and his
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: team from.
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: From TJM Labs and.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Just just the immense amount of attention that's brought to
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: that you're not gonna want to miss this this episode,
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: in this interview with t j M Labs CEO Jonathan Adley.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: Can't wait for you to hear it coming up here
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: on twerks and my friend Mike Johnston, CEO of n
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: p A t NPTA is going to.
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: Be there talking about the importance of your texts.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: Who we just went through the rays of pay for
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: for Walmart texts and that means that the value of
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: our Texas absolutely going up. You should be taken care
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: of that shout out to Stephanie Zimmerman who's going to
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: be at the Profit Summit Live and she has decades
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: of leadership in pharmacy business growth. She's gonna have some
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: strategies in the insurance building secrets PBMs do not want
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: you to know and just so excited to be a
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: part of this. So if you are not registered, if
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: you're not signed up for the Pharmacy Profit summ at Live,
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: go to Pharmacy Profitsummit live dot com. Once again, that's
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: Pharmacy Profit Summit live dot com and I will see
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: you there. And that is for Twerk's News. But be
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: on lookout. As soon as we come back, we are
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: gonna give you two major announcements in pharmacy news the
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: impact the entire profession. You are not gonna want to
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: miss this.
• 14:55
  Speaker 5: We'll be right back.
• 14:56
  Speaker 6: This episode is sponsored by Independent Pharmacy Cooperative, widely known
• 15:00
  Speaker 6: as IPC. Established in nineteen eighty three, IPC is the
• 15:04
  Speaker 6: nation's largest group purchasing organization owned by Independent Pharmacy with
• 15:09
  Speaker 6: a mission of maximizing the success of community pharmacists. IPC
• 15:13
  Speaker 6: works to provide members with access to effective programs and
• 15:16
  Speaker 6: services designed to enhance profitability for independent pharmacy. Read more
• 15:21
  Speaker 6: about our mission by checking out our website at ipcrx
• 15:24
  Speaker 6: dot com. That's ipcrx dot com.
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: Hi, I am guaranteeding chief operating Officer with its.
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: Hey there, welcome to works.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: This is our special feature and a returning guest, a
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: friend of mine, Johnny Kello, CEO of match Rx. Johnny,
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: it's so good to see you back.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Hey, thanks to thanks for having me again. I'd love
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: the first two episodes with Alisa Bernstein and Daily talking
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: about with day at least trump our X and with Elisa,
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: you know all the things that are DSCSA, you know
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: that matter and that are coming down the pipeline which
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: requires even further and further discussion as we near November
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty twenty six.
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, two powerful episodes. Our first that featured Matrox
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: was bringing to the table Elisa Bernstein, one of the
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: pharmacy fifty most influential people in our in our profession.
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Very proud to have had her on talking about DSCSA.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: Then we switched gears and we were really digging down
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: into trump our X and how.
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: There's just so much unknown right now.
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: And obviously we just heard about the new federal legislation
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: being on the desk of President Trump to get that
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: pushed through. And I'm sure that we can invite back
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: many of the people that you've recommended, including doctor Daily
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: pharm D with with his with his team, and and
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: how deep the knowledge is in these spaces and how
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: fast things are changing. You know, you started this insights
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: and started giving us this data and started bringing these
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: conversations to us Johnny in November, and look how much
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: has changed in February of twenty twenty six.
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: Lreaty, It's dynamic.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: And today we've got another exciting guest and yes, I
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: do you know is a farm D runs a group
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: of independent pharmacies. A lot of excitement and really today's
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: discussion is going to be revolved around generic compliance ratio.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: You know, the GCR that that magic acronym that you
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: know pharmacies are trying to calculate on a regular basis
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: isn't always uh, you know, straightforward, and then h having
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: the right GCR, but also being able to shop outside
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: of your contract so that you can really make the
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: difference in the bottom line. So with that, i'd love
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: to you know, welcome said onto the floor.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: Onto the show, Doctor Dana, doctor Dina, Welcome to twerks.
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: It's good to have you here.
• 18:20
  Speaker 7: Thank you, thank you. It's an honor of being on here.
• 18:22
  Speaker 7: Appreciate the warm welcome.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Todd. So say, look, a lot of farmers
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: are dispensing, you know, more than ever, but they're keeping
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: less and you know that as well as anybody. Uh,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: But today we want to talk about one of the
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: quiet metrics behind that. And most farmers get it. But
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: you know, when you dig down deep, it gets a
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: little bit more challenging to actually track and calculate. So
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: I want to, you know, in plain English, I'd love
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: to hear you under explain to us, you know, the
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: GCR and policy, but not necessarily theory. How does it
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: work day to day? Your behavior, your team's behavior, training
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: your team to understand where they should be buying on
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: a regular basis. So yeah, perfect.
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks Johnny.
• 19:15
  Speaker 7: So really GCR, like we said, is the generic compliance ratio,
• 19:20
  Speaker 7: you know, plan English, it's pretty much what's your percentage
• 19:24
  Speaker 7: of generic purchasing compared to your brand. You know, let's
• 19:28
  Speaker 7: say you're getting one hundred thousand dollars in brand purchasing
• 19:31
  Speaker 7: and you're getting twenty thousand dollars in generics. That puts
• 19:35
  Speaker 7: you at a twenty percent ratio. Okay, So that's really
• 19:38
  Speaker 7: kind of the basis of it. And why why is
• 19:41
  Speaker 7: that important? I would say, just because it allows you
• 19:46
  Speaker 7: to unlock certain rebate levels with your wholesaler depending on
• 19:53
  Speaker 7: whatever your contract is. So understanding and knowing where you
• 19:56
  Speaker 7: stand where a pharmacy stands in GCR is very very important.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: Thank you. And I'm going to just back up a
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: little bit and I'm gonna let Todd kind of give
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: another intro to said about all his uh you know,
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: who he is, where he spent his time, what his
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: specialty is, and Tod, why don't you kind of just
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: touch on Sayid's you know, background, and why he's sitting
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: here in front.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: Of us, said as a as a pharmacy owner, somebody
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: that runs a pharmacy and then has layered your experience
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: to bring on other pharmacies which now challenging and any
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: growth to now embrace a community specifically, I think that
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: that that and of itself that could become more books,
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: more education for some of our new owners. The survival
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: of independent community pharmacy is really in the hands of
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: the owners and of the designers of the services you provide.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: And you know, you have a background as a director
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: of operations that's very different necessarily than my realm's just
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: more about public relations and marketing, even though that can
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: become part of it, but you really have to pay
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: attention to the minuscule data. You have to pay attention
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: to the cost down to the penny, especially with the
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: temperament and the temperature of the challenges that you're going through.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Expand for our listeners, things that you've done to layer
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: your experiences has come to this point in being prepared
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: for scalability.
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you so much.
• 21:25
  Speaker 8: So.
• 21:25
  Speaker 7: You know, by trade, I'm a pharmacist, you know, been
• 21:28
  Speaker 7: a pharmacist for over sixteen years. Most of my time
• 21:32
  Speaker 7: has really been spent in the management side of multi
• 21:35
  Speaker 7: unit operations. You know, worked in the chain pharmacies and
• 21:39
  Speaker 7: then of course in the independent space where I've spent
• 21:42
  Speaker 7: the majority of my time. I like to help stores
• 21:45
  Speaker 7: kind of run better day to day, working closely with
• 21:49
  Speaker 7: owners managers really on workflow, staffing, purchasing and plus margin.
• 21:55
  Speaker 7: Of course, what really stood out throughout the years is
• 21:59
  Speaker 7: that you know how small decisions behind the scenes show
• 22:03
  Speaker 7: up later in the numbers and specifically also with you know,
• 22:06
  Speaker 7: of course profitability and profitability with GCR. My current role,
• 22:10
  Speaker 7: you know, like you mentioned directive operation of a group
• 22:13
  Speaker 7: in independent pharmacies and the Michigan market. A big part
• 22:16
  Speaker 7: of my job is helping in the daily operation plus profitability.
• 22:21
  Speaker 7: Drug purchases play a huge role of that, and the
• 22:25
  Speaker 7: way we buy drugs really influences kind of the end
• 22:30
  Speaker 7: of the month, how we how our financials look like
• 22:33
  Speaker 7: and if there's a space for us to kind of
• 22:36
  Speaker 7: breathe like like I like to say, you know, I've
• 22:39
  Speaker 7: been I've seen pharmacies really struggle with profitability even having
• 22:45
  Speaker 7: strong volume, and really simply is because they are not
• 22:50
  Speaker 7: aligned with their current contracts of purchasing. And the GCR
• 22:54
  Speaker 7: kind of shows up all over that. So once teams
• 22:57
  Speaker 7: really understand how purchase behaviors affect their profitability, Uh, you
• 23:03
  Speaker 7: know the check the picture really changes at that point, right.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Thank you say, that's that's a great overview. And uh
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: and again, uh, you know, tell us why it's important
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: and where does this all tie in between your primary
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: contract buying with your wholesalers and then opportunities to be
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: outside of your wholesaler to be able to purchase so
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: that you can have the maximum value on each purchase.
• 23:31
  Speaker 7: Absolutely, so uh really, GCR everybody has to understand. Every pharmacist,
• 23:38
  Speaker 7: pharmacy manager, owner has to understand where GCR stands okay
• 23:43
  Speaker 7: for them to really be able to make a meaningful impact.
• 23:47
  Speaker 7: And when something that pharmacies don't understand sometimes is when
• 23:52
  Speaker 7: you're not hitting your GCR, it's affecting the larger picture.
• 23:55
  Speaker 7: It's not just that rebates on their generics, but also
• 23:58
  Speaker 7: on the brand names, which we'll.
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: Talk more about.
• 24:02
  Speaker 7: When you whenever you maximize your GCR, this is when
• 24:06
  Speaker 7: from your primary whole saler. This is where it unlocks
• 24:08
  Speaker 7: the space where you're able to now go shop out
• 24:11
  Speaker 7: shop from secondary and really drive additional dollars to your
• 24:17
  Speaker 7: to your margin at that point. But again, it all
• 24:19
  Speaker 7: ties in with pharmacists and pharmacies understanding what their contracts
• 24:23
  Speaker 7: are and understanding where they stand on a regular basis
• 24:27
  Speaker 7: what they're purchasing from their wholesaler.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Right, So tell us what doesn't it measure? Because we
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: always talk about what it measures. It measures your your
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: total purchases against your generic purchases. And there's a it's
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: a sliding scale based on your reimbursement or rather your
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: rebate from your primary But what doesn't it measure so
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: that when you do go outside of that, you're not
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: affecting that GCR. Yeah, so you know when.
• 24:56
  Speaker 7: You're looking at pharmacies to pharmacies in your comparing them,
• 25:00
  Speaker 7: it doesn't measure really the financial health directly of a
• 25:04
  Speaker 7: pharmacy when you compare two together, because each pharmacy might
• 25:07
  Speaker 7: have a different contract from their wholesaler. So understanding what
• 25:12
  Speaker 7: truly the contract is, that's what allows you to have
• 25:15
  Speaker 7: a better understanding of that pharmacy. So you cannot always
• 25:19
  Speaker 7: compare two pharmacies, Oh, I have twenty percent GCR. Okay,
• 25:23
  Speaker 7: that doesn't make a difference on the second pharmacy that
• 25:26
  Speaker 7: has a completely different contract with their wholesaler. So you
• 25:29
  Speaker 7: have to really understand how it relates to that direct
• 25:33
  Speaker 7: contract rather than comparing my pharmacy is a twenty five
• 25:37
  Speaker 7: percent GCR, Well, you know that's fine, it doesn't make
• 25:40
  Speaker 7: a difference. You have to understand what the contract is first.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: So for the more experienced pharmacies that already track their
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: GC on a regular basis and they're doing exactly what
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: you're saying, and you know, some of this might be
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: more of a refresher course for them. Imagine you're talking
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: to a new pharmacy, somebody who recently out of school,
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: is working for a pharmacy who wants to improve, or
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: who recently purchased or opened up a pharmacy. Talk to
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: them about you know, you know what you'd explain to
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: the pharmacist who's never thought about it before, or at
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: least thinks about it, but really doesn't know how to implement.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: And that's the key here, I think is that people
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: know about it, and a lot of the veterans really
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: understand it. But then there's a segment and some of
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: the newbies that are in the space who you know,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: don't think about it, or if they do, they still
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: aren't clear on how to apply it on their day
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: to day business. Very good.
• 26:40
  Speaker 7: So I explained that GCR again generic compliance Ratio. It's
• 26:45
  Speaker 7: like your report card with your wholesaler. The wholesaler sets,
• 26:51
  Speaker 7: you know, expectations around how much you are buying in generics.
• 26:56
  Speaker 7: Hitting your GCR means you're meeting their expectation, which then
• 27:00
  Speaker 7: gives you and unlocks different levels of rebate back both
• 27:05
  Speaker 7: on generics and on brand name, and I'd like to
• 27:08
  Speaker 7: explain that it's very important to not forget the rebate
• 27:13
  Speaker 7: that you get on the brands because that really unlocks
• 27:17
  Speaker 7: a larger dollar amount back into the pharmacy. So this
• 27:22
  Speaker 7: is very important. One understand what is your contract with
• 27:27
  Speaker 7: your wholesaler. I hit eighteen percent? What is my rebate
• 27:31
  Speaker 7: one on generics? And what is my rebate on brands?
• 27:35
  Speaker 7: I hit twenty percent? How does that look like? And
• 27:38
  Speaker 7: that's what pharmacies that really manage this process and understand it,
• 27:43
  Speaker 7: it pays off really well. I'll give you an example
• 27:46
  Speaker 7: looking at a high volume pharmacy that was consistently and
• 27:50
  Speaker 7: this is recent was hitting below eighteen percent on their
• 27:55
  Speaker 7: GCR and they're like, no, we're purchasing all the drugs,
• 28:00
  Speaker 7: you know, from outside sources.
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: Okay, no problem.
• 28:04
  Speaker 7: But what happened is they were missing out two and
• 28:06
  Speaker 7: a half percent on brand rebates. As soon as they
• 28:10
  Speaker 7: hit their proper with their contract, they're eighteen percent. In
• 28:13
  Speaker 7: that specific case, they unlocked ten thousand dollars extra a
• 28:17
  Speaker 7: month in brand name rebates, which is significant to the
• 28:21
  Speaker 7: bottom line. But at that point, once they unlock that,
• 28:26
  Speaker 7: then there's no additional incentives to pushing your GCR from
• 28:31
  Speaker 7: eighteen to twenty to twenty five percent for example.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a point of a there's a point of
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: diminishing returns is what you're saying. Or there's a point
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: of like there's no added value to having met your GCR.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Once you've met it, recognize it, and then take advantage
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: of outside sources, you know, to put a you know,
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: a selfish plug in. You can use matchrx for buying
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: outside of that, whether it's for generics on their wholesale
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: side or with other pharmacies. But leave that aside. But
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: I would say there's a point of diminishing returns or
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: no return and the generics are where the wholesalers are
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: making the biggest spreads, so obviously want you to buy
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: all your generals from them. But once you've met that threshold,
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: then it's time to really be focused on looking outside
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: of that. Is that fair.
• 29:22
  Speaker 7: That you hit it right on? That's exactly what it is,
• 29:25
  Speaker 7: because as soon as you hit your tier where you're
• 29:28
  Speaker 7: maxing out your brand, that you leave yourself a little
• 29:31
  Speaker 7: cushion and then shuffle that additional purchasing from your secondaries okay,
• 29:37
  Speaker 7: and then you're really unlocking a lot of additional dollars
• 29:41
  Speaker 7: to your bottom line. There's no point of pushing your
• 29:44
  Speaker 7: GCR any higher after that. And again this happens with
• 29:50
  Speaker 7: you know, pharmacies being regularly just used to always buying
• 29:53
  Speaker 7: everything from one source.
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: Well, you're losing.
• 29:56
  Speaker 7: You're leaving a lot of dollars on the table at
• 29:59
  Speaker 7: that point. So I encourage understanding of your contract and
• 30:03
  Speaker 7: then knowing when you've hit your you've maxed out your rebates,
• 30:08
  Speaker 7: and shuffle that dollars.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: So it's a very important thing.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: So talk to us about minimum requirements from the wholesaler
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: in terms of total volume. Is there a threshold that
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: needs to be met, say you have to buy three
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars or whatever the number might be on
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: a monthly basis for you to even reach a threshold
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: or is it just purely the ratio that is that matters.
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: Truth to be told, it depends on the contract.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 30:38
  Speaker 7: Some wholesalers don't have a minimum, some do. I'm working
• 30:42
  Speaker 7: currently with one great plan, but it's seventy five thousand
• 30:46
  Speaker 7: dollars in monthly purchased. So when you're you have a
• 30:49
  Speaker 7: newer pharmacy starting up, it's difficult for you to hit
• 30:53
  Speaker 7: that seventy five thousand dollars right after the bat, So
• 30:56
  Speaker 7: then you're not maximizing your rebates for a pharmacy like that.
• 31:00
  Speaker 7: Truth to be told. I tell them go heavy on
• 31:02
  Speaker 7: secondary purchasing. Don't don't throw all your dollars to your primary,
• 31:07
  Speaker 7: because you're never going to maxi on your on your
• 31:11
  Speaker 7: ratio on your GCR, and you're just giving them extra
• 31:16
  Speaker 7: dollars that at that point purchase from your secondary. Make
• 31:19
  Speaker 7: that extra money on there on your bottom line. Now,
• 31:22
  Speaker 7: when you're start to build up and you're hitting those tiers, no,
• 31:25
  Speaker 7: bring those dollars back, maximize your GCR, and then relocate.
• 31:31
  Speaker 7: But that brings us back to understanding having a deep
• 31:33
  Speaker 7: understanding of what your rate of your contract.
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: Great, thank you, I have a curve boss, I need So, yeah,
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: this is something that I'm really interested in. So five
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: years ago I would not have asked you this because
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: it didn't exist. Today, we are seeing a trend that's
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: going to continue to grow in the realm of cost
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: plus and the realm of cash base. In the realm
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: of getting completely away. There are pharmacies out there, two
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: of them in the Pittsburgh area, right in my own hometown,
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: that do one hundred percent cash base businesses. They're going
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: to be leaning into clinical services, They're going to be
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: leaning into other ways of making money. So what you're
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: describing for our podcast listeners today is relevant because it's
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: here right now.
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: This is the business model.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: But will this business model continue to transform into something
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: else where GCR and the overall profitability of our pharmacies,
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: it will evolve into something different than what we're talking
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: about today.
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think so.
• 32:42
  Speaker 7: At that point, these pharmacies that are cash plus model
• 32:46
  Speaker 7: heavily rely on generics. Okay, and at that point, many
• 32:51
  Speaker 7: of the large wholesalers they wanted your generic purchasing, and
• 32:57
  Speaker 7: then they give you the brands at a better price
• 32:59
  Speaker 7: because you're bringing them x amount of volume. If it's
• 33:02
  Speaker 7: if you're a cost plus model and you don't have
• 33:06
  Speaker 7: a lot of brand name dispensing, then you're no longer
• 33:10
  Speaker 7: tied to your primary wholesaler. Those are when I encourage
• 33:14
  Speaker 7: these pharmacies to go heavy on their secondaries and and
• 33:18
  Speaker 7: really getting a better rate on their generics. Of course,
• 33:23
  Speaker 7: they're still going to have brands that they need to dispense,
• 33:26
  Speaker 7: but dispensing one thousand dollars brand name that you're paying
• 33:30
  Speaker 7: out of pocket, you're going to see a little bit
• 33:32
  Speaker 7: less of.
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: That, in my opinion.
• 33:33
  Speaker 7: In the cash plus model, it's going to be more
• 33:36
  Speaker 7: heavier on generics, and true to be told, you know,
• 33:39
  Speaker 7: there are patients that are on a regular basis with
• 33:43
  Speaker 7: their insurance, they're overpaying for many generics and the pharmacy,
• 33:48
  Speaker 7: you know, is not allowed to let the patient know that, hey,
• 33:51
  Speaker 7: you can get cheaper through your through your cash pay option.
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: So these models will continue to grow.
• 33:59
  Speaker 7: And it's interesting to really see where that's going to
• 34:02
  Speaker 7: navigate you in the next few years.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: So is that where you're seeing good pharmacies accidentally hurt themselves.
• 34:11
  Speaker 7: Yes, So we have pharmacies that at times they don't
• 34:17
  Speaker 7: understand their contracts and then they're either buying out too
• 34:21
  Speaker 7: much or they're buying in too much from their wholesaler,
• 34:26
  Speaker 7: walking in blindly and making purchases blindly just thinking hey,
• 34:30
  Speaker 7: I'm always getting the good pricing, the best price.
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: That's not the reality.
• 34:35
  Speaker 7: You have to kind of micromanage the process, and part
• 34:38
  Speaker 7: of that is really kind of for the pharmacist to
• 34:41
  Speaker 7: keep it in the back of their mind always, am
• 34:45
  Speaker 7: I getting the better price? How does that look like
• 34:47
  Speaker 7: with my GCR? Where am I with my contract? And
• 34:51
  Speaker 7: really what is the model of the pharmacy? So is
• 34:54
  Speaker 7: it a typical open door insurance pharmacy or are we
• 34:58
  Speaker 7: talking cost plus model?
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: Great?
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: Thank you, all right, and then let's take the same data,
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: let's take the same way of thinking and the coaching
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: that you're providing on this podcast.
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: Say it is extremely valuable. Let's add in.
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: Another slight curve ball, but it's not really that much
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: of a curveball, because I'm sure that your pharmacies have
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: been doing this all along anyway. So pharmacies, community pharmacies,
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: independents are finally getting paid to deliver long term care
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: pharmacy at home services in a way to actually now
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: shift and do it from a compliance perspective, actually follow
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: the formats in order to be reimbursed properly. So when
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: you start mixing that into the ingredients, now you have
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: an independent community pharmacy that have almost a little sprinkling
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: of a couple different models under the same the same roof.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: Like one is the straight community retail environment where GCR
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: plays a big role. An other is me be a
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: club membership that includes you know, some some clinical stuff
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: and some services. And then now we have this long
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: term care pharmacy at home where you get to as
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: long as you're compliant with long term care standards for
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: the home based services, you can get reimbursed in a
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: different way. Talk to us a little bit about that
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: dynamic too.
• 36:20
  Speaker 7: Absolutely, long term care at home is exciting and it's
• 36:24
  Speaker 7: a new thing that we are seeing with the pharmacy reimbursement.
• 36:28
  Speaker 7: Reimbursement seems to have a little bit of a better
• 36:31
  Speaker 7: edge on it. So again, you know, we go back
• 36:34
  Speaker 7: and the bottom line on you know, the insurance is
• 36:38
  Speaker 7: only going to pay x amount. The next level is
• 36:41
  Speaker 7: to kind of try to drive the additional profit is
• 36:44
  Speaker 7: making sure that you know, our pharmacist understand and where
• 36:48
  Speaker 7: purchasing need to be from really dropping their cost.
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: Their drug cost.
• 36:55
  Speaker 7: So that is an exciting thing that we're seeing with
• 36:57
  Speaker 7: the long term care at home. So we we hope
• 37:00
  Speaker 7: to continue it. And again, like you mentioned earlier, newer
• 37:06
  Speaker 7: legislations coming through hopefully you know, empowering pharmacies and providing
• 37:12
  Speaker 7: more better reimbursement for the independent space. So we're excited
• 37:16
  Speaker 7: to see what's next.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: Say, let's try to simplify this, because you know, we
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: talk about GCR and managing and monitoring. Could somebody conceivably
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: just pick a number based on their volume, based on
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: their purchasing from their wholesaler on a historical basis between
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: brand Engineeric and say, hey, look, I know that if
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: I buy ten thousand dollars a month or fifteen thousand
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: dollars a month outside of my contract with secondaries, then
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: I feel comfortable that I've met my other requirements in
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: my contract. Because sometimes people don't want to go through
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: this entire you know, brain damage, right, And so how
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: do we simplify it for some farmers to say, hey, look,
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: pick a number, here's I'm going to buy. I know
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: I can buy ten, twenty thousand, whatever that number might
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: be outside of my contract, and I've still met my
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: obligation and maximized my rebates on my primary. Is that
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: a kind of a simplified approach to buying outside of
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: your contract.
• 38:22
  Speaker 7: A thousand percent, Johnny, If you want to simplify it,
• 38:26
  Speaker 7: that's probably the easiest and simplest way, Say I have
• 38:30
  Speaker 7: an X amount, I'm allowed to buy from outside sources secondaries.
• 38:35
  Speaker 7: Once you hit that, then the remainder of purchases should
• 38:38
  Speaker 7: be from your primary Okay, that's if you want to,
• 38:41
  Speaker 7: you know, keep it as simple, no complications to it.
• 38:46
  Speaker 7: I do encourage, however, always, you know, personally speaking, I
• 38:50
  Speaker 7: like to see, you know, our screen is green when
• 38:53
  Speaker 7: we adjudicate a claim that you're properly getting reimbursed. So
• 38:57
  Speaker 7: I always encouraged saying, you know, take a look at
• 39:00
  Speaker 7: dispensing and identify drugs that you're regularly losing money on,
• 39:05
  Speaker 7: and those drugs, for example, you know, estrogen patches, you know,
• 39:09
  Speaker 7: or birth control commonly come back as negative reimbursement. I
• 39:13
  Speaker 7: tell pharmacies, you know what, go ahead and make those
• 39:16
  Speaker 7: a habit that these just automatically goes to your secondary supplier.
• 39:21
  Speaker 7: Purchases from there get used to reimbursement replenishing from there,
• 39:25
  Speaker 7: and it just helps you now to keep everything balanced. Yes,
• 39:29
  Speaker 7: I love your idea of having an X amount kind
• 39:32
  Speaker 7: of a budget, knowing, hey, don't go over that ten
• 39:35
  Speaker 7: thousand or fifteen thousand or whatever it might be of
• 39:38
  Speaker 7: purchasing from outside.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, so what you're saying is there's a
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: double win here. One is a pick a number, bide
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: outside contract and be pick the products within that amount
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: of negative reimbursement. So now not only are you getting
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: the best pricing because you're shopping outside, but also still
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: not affecting your rebate. So like again a real simple strategy.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: Here's the dollar amount, it's five, ten, twenty thirty, whatever
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: that number might be. And within that amount, pick the items.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: Prick the drugs that are primarily a negative reimbursement for you,
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: so that you're at least either breaking even or making
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: a little bit and not falling backwards and affecting your
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: bottom line.
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: Absolutely, that's a really good way to put it, Johnny,
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: I like it.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm a simple person, so that's why I can
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: come up with simple ideas. Talk to us about what
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: really moves the needle for pharmacies. I know you try
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: to break it out generally into like three buckets, So
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about that, and how do
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: you approach it regularly again in simplified ways of executing
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: this plan?
• 40:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely.
• 40:55
  Speaker 7: First things first, I encourage and every pharmacist manager, pharmacy
• 41:01
  Speaker 7: owner to understand your your contract with your wholesaler. Okay,
• 41:07
  Speaker 7: once you understand it, that's number one. Number two is
• 41:09
  Speaker 7: then kind of just making it part of your daily
• 41:12
  Speaker 7: behavior with your team, with yourself, is that you're checking
• 41:17
  Speaker 7: how are you doing.
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: Overall with your GCR?
• 41:19
  Speaker 7: Are you going to maximize your primary wholesaler purchases? And
• 41:25
  Speaker 7: then from there really shop out, go to your secondaries
• 41:30
  Speaker 7: and take a look. Like we mentioned on your those
• 41:32
  Speaker 7: negative claims that you're losing money on, move those to
• 41:35
  Speaker 7: your secondary suppliers, and you really your P and L
• 41:39
  Speaker 7: will look.
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: Will really love you.
• 41:40
  Speaker 7: At that point, you'll see a nice fruitful return on
• 41:45
  Speaker 7: your bottom line.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: So let's like brass tax, right because you know this
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: sounds great. Okay, I'm a pharmacy. I'm doing you know,
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: two and a half million dollars a year. If I do,
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: if I simplify into a plan of buying X, about
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: how much can I really save under this plan? Is
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: it a thousand? Is it ten thousand? Is it fifteen
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: thousand a month? Give us a real so something that's
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: tangible that people really can sink their teeth into and say, oh,
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: if I spent this little amount of time to stay
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: focused and understand, here's the real payoff dollar for dollar
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: on a two and a half million dollar pharmacy. Just yeah,
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: I pick that number because it's a relatively average.
• 42:31
  Speaker 7: Now, so like a pharmacy that you mentioned, two and
• 42:36
  Speaker 7: a half million can really you know, unlock in depending
• 42:39
  Speaker 7: on their contract. If let's say they brought in their
• 42:42
  Speaker 7: brands engineer, purchase it through their primary, they can really
• 42:46
  Speaker 7: ull lock an additional just depends on their contract two
• 42:49
  Speaker 7: percent maybe okay of savings on their brands, So extrapolate
• 42:54
  Speaker 7: that what does that look like? And then as soon
• 42:57
  Speaker 7: as they maximize their CR, shuffle that additional dollars. I mean,
• 43:03
  Speaker 7: just the other day, like I mentioned, I had a
• 43:05
  Speaker 7: pharmacy that you know, could potentially get an additional ten
• 43:08
  Speaker 7: thousand dollars a month from brand rebate if they properly
• 43:12
  Speaker 7: structured their purchasing. Another pharmacy was probably ordering an additional
• 43:16
  Speaker 7: six thousand dollars and monthly generics from their primary, but
• 43:20
  Speaker 7: they were not receiving any additional GCR. Their top tier
• 43:24
  Speaker 7: was twenty percent, they were at twenty five percent GCR.
• 43:27
  Speaker 7: There's no absolutely no reason take that additional six thousand
• 43:31
  Speaker 7: and purchasing from primary buy it from secondary.
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: Probably costs.
• 43:35
  Speaker 7: You you know, four thousand, you've kept an extra couple
• 43:38
  Speaker 7: thousand in your pocket. So I really encourage kind of
• 43:42
  Speaker 7: diving deep into those numbers for your pharmacy.
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: Great, thank you. Yeah, and that's that's tangible. Two thousand
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: dollars a month, can you know twenty five thousand dollars
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: a year or even more depending on how aggressive you
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: want to be and what product types you're buying, you
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: can save some real dollars that pick a pick where
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: you want to put it, you know, employees, personal growth
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: of business, put it in your front end where you're
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: going to be. You know, you're not tied to rebates
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: or anything else, and you know we won't. That's a
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: whole different show talking about the front end. But really,
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: you know, when you talk about savings, you've got to
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: pluck throughough places to put it in your kids education,
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: your wife's new shoes, or your your or your husband's
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: new you know wallet. But but the bottom line is
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: that it's it's your money. Recognize that, and you know,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: take advantage of what is a simple, uh to follow
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: tool and really become impactful. So, uh, anyways, I digress
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about the other uh, you
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: know points that you'd like to keep an eye on,
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: you know, whether it's your dispensing awareness or your operational habits,
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: on how you train your team, because it's that about
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: just doing it yourself. Right. We all know that the
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: best pharmacies are run by a team, not one person
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: trying to do everything. That's any business. You know at Matrox,
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: you know we've got forty people here. I can't do
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: ninety percent of what my team does. It's or fortunate
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: enough to have great team members that goes with any business,
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: including pharmacy. So tell us a little bit about, you know,
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: how you are actively training your team, following up and
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: encouraging them to really think like an owner.
• 45:34
  Speaker 7: Absolutely so really getting them involved. I like to have
• 45:39
  Speaker 7: everybody involved, you know, in the pharmacy team and understanding why,
• 45:43
  Speaker 7: like what's the reason behind Okay, you know, really this
• 45:47
  Speaker 7: drug has to be purchased from this supplier rather than
• 45:50
  Speaker 7: from primary or primary and vice versa. And having the why,
• 45:54
  Speaker 7: understanding why behind it. It really allows them to understand
• 45:58
  Speaker 7: why we're doing this. Another thing is kind of teams
• 46:02
  Speaker 7: have to understand to be proactive not reactive. A lot
• 46:06
  Speaker 7: of times they go to order drugs and it's out
• 46:09
  Speaker 7: of stock. They need to order it, have it and
• 46:12
  Speaker 7: to buy tomorrow. That way they can have it for
• 46:14
  Speaker 7: the patient. And a thousand percent understandable. But sometimes you
• 46:17
  Speaker 7: have to take a look at proactively what are the
• 46:20
  Speaker 7: medications are is coming up to be filled? Okay, our
• 46:22
  Speaker 7: ninety day supplies and so on and ahead of time.
• 46:26
  Speaker 7: If for example, you're doing great in GCR, go ahead
• 46:29
  Speaker 7: and shop out your secondaries and purchase these drugs. Now
• 46:33
  Speaker 7: you're fulfilling ahead of time, ordering them ahead of time.
• 46:37
  Speaker 7: So part of that is again is the habit of
• 46:39
  Speaker 7: the of the pharmacy team members. Another thing sometimes I see,
• 46:43
  Speaker 7: you know issues arise is contract pricing change with primary
• 46:47
  Speaker 7: vendors and the technicians comes or the pharmacy member comes
• 46:52
  Speaker 7: and immediately just re ordering the exact same NDC. And
• 46:56
  Speaker 7: that's a big problem because you know, you have to
• 46:58
  Speaker 7: re substitute depending on your platform, does allowed to automatically
• 47:02
  Speaker 7: substitute to the preferred generics. You don't want any generic
• 47:06
  Speaker 7: purchasing that doesn't go towards your overall generic.
• 47:12
  Speaker 4: Allowance by the.
• 47:14
  Speaker 7: Wholesaler, because not every generic manufacturer that you can purchase
• 47:19
  Speaker 7: is going to go towards your GCR. So again, these
• 47:22
  Speaker 7: are a lot of things that they have to understand
• 47:24
  Speaker 7: a lot of tidbit as well as understanding the contract.
• 47:27
  Speaker 7: Sometimes there's some carvat from brands or total purchases. For example,
• 47:32
  Speaker 7: depending on the contract GLP GP one's medications, some specialty drugs,
• 47:37
  Speaker 7: drop ship drugs. So having an understanding that you know,
• 47:40
  Speaker 7: if I'm about to order a two thousand dollars drop
• 47:42
  Speaker 7: ship item, is this going to count toward my GCR
• 47:46
  Speaker 7: or not? Okay, a lot of times it does not,
• 47:49
  Speaker 7: So it gives you a little bit more room. Then
• 47:51
  Speaker 7: you don't think that you need to move as much
• 47:54
  Speaker 7: from secondary to primary at that point because you're accounting
• 47:57
  Speaker 7: for an item that doesn't count against you. So it
• 48:01
  Speaker 7: all goes back to kind of educating the team, working
• 48:04
  Speaker 7: with them on a regular basis. And you know, we
• 48:07
  Speaker 7: really do see pharmacies that are able to turn around
• 48:10
  Speaker 7: once they get a hangout a handle on their purchasing.
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: So you know, let's talk about that denominator, that GCR denominator, right,
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: and it's heavily weighted towards the brands because those are
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: the most expensive ones, right, you know, does it is
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: it in the best interest of the pharmacy to buy
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: sometimes outside of their primary because they don't have a
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: minimum or they constantly meet their total minimum. But buying
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: a brand outside of it, whether it's through a secondary
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: or through a marketplace up because again that continues to
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: lower that GCR compliance number, because that denominator with the
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: big ticket item is less, and it gives you more
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: exposure to being able to buy more generics outside of contract.
• 48:58
  Speaker 7: Absolutely so, I mean, if you are able to shuffle
• 49:02
  Speaker 7: some brand name drugs outside to secondary, that's that's a
• 49:06
  Speaker 7: no brainer there as long as reimbursement on these typically
• 49:10
  Speaker 7: can be can offset the price of how much you're
• 49:14
  Speaker 7: purchasing these brands for. If you're getting toward the end
• 49:17
  Speaker 7: of the month, I always encourage you don't have to
• 49:18
  Speaker 7: look at your GC on a daily basis. And you know,
• 49:21
  Speaker 7: especially in the first couple of weeks of the month,
• 49:23
  Speaker 7: I always say, just you know, it's fine, don't look
• 49:26
  Speaker 7: at it yet. Have it in the back of your mind,
• 49:28
  Speaker 7: but don't look at it yet. Once you get to
• 49:30
  Speaker 7: halfway through the month, stop looking at it. And one
• 49:32
  Speaker 7: of the things you can do is one bring in
• 49:35
  Speaker 7: some brand generic purchasing back to primary or two certain
• 49:39
  Speaker 7: brands if there's space, if there's enough margins spread on them,
• 49:42
  Speaker 7: take them out, buy them from secondaries, and that goes
• 49:46
  Speaker 7: away from your total purchasing from your you know, your
• 49:49
  Speaker 7: formula of how much you're purchasing, and then automatically your
• 49:53
  Speaker 7: generics is going to look higher your GCR. So that's
• 49:56
  Speaker 7: another way kind of playing around with that number.
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And we see that sometimes in the marketplaces
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: that we operate in as well as that members will
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: buy not necessarily just for GCR, just because for the
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: need of the product where it's not always available from
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: the primary, but it's the added benefit is that it
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: lowers their denominator on their GCR numbers.
• 50:18
  Speaker 7: And to be frank, I mean match is a great
• 50:20
  Speaker 7: resource for that to getting some of those you know, friend, it's.
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: True to be told, you know, so I appreciate that.
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: Thanks, thanks for being the members too. All right, so
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: tell us because we want to try to start winding
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: this up, but give us like some fast wins and
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: and what's one change that feels uncomfortable at first but
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: pays off. So those are two different questions, but sometimes
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: they're one and the same.
• 50:47
  Speaker 7: Well, you know I'm gonna repeat this, but the something
• 50:51
  Speaker 7: uncomfortable that pharmacies can do first things, it's just calling
• 50:55
  Speaker 7: their rep for their primary wholesaler and be like, can
• 50:58
  Speaker 7: you explain to me what my my contract is? You know,
• 51:02
  Speaker 7: I promise you. You know, majority of pharmacists don't dig
• 51:06
  Speaker 7: deep into that. So that's the most uncomfortable first thing.
• 51:09
  Speaker 7: Once you understand it, then you can play with it.
• 51:12
  Speaker 7: You can, you can really dive into it and push
• 51:16
  Speaker 7: the numbers and move the needle at that point. So
• 51:19
  Speaker 7: I encourage you to call your rep. They'll be more
• 51:21
  Speaker 7: than happy to answer those questions and see you engaged
• 51:24
  Speaker 7: to learn about it. And then you know, get to
• 51:28
  Speaker 7: know your numbers. You know, once you do that right away,
• 51:31
  Speaker 7: you're going to start seeing a big benefit from it.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: So and so so like, I don't know about you,
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: but do you have like a cheat sheet that I
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: you know, next to your computer that talks about where
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: those numbers are your threshold or is that between the ears?
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: Because somebody who's new might say, hey, I understood it,
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: but I forgot the numbers or you know, I'm not clear,
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: or it's something you want to share with your team,
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about how you actually, you know,
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: put it in practice versus just you know, knowing it
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: because you've been in the business.
• 52:04
  Speaker 7: Forever personally speaking, you know, I have an Excel calculator
• 52:09
  Speaker 7: kind of formula I've developed for our plans for our
• 52:14
  Speaker 7: contracts where we just plug in the numbers and it
• 52:16
  Speaker 7: kind of gives us a little calculation on how much
• 52:20
  Speaker 7: is it that we need to how much dollars we
• 52:22
  Speaker 7: have to move out or move in back to our wholesaler.
• 52:26
  Speaker 7: So now I don't expect everywhere to do.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: That, but.
• 52:31
  Speaker 7: All your wholesalers, your primary wholesalers, should be sending you
• 52:35
  Speaker 7: regular communications of what your GCRs are and I would
• 52:41
  Speaker 7: take that and kind of if you're hitting your GCR
• 52:45
  Speaker 7: of twenty percent or whatever it might be, then you're good.
• 52:48
  Speaker 7: Keep a little cushion. Otherwise, you know, reach out and
• 52:52
  Speaker 7: try and figure that out. I do encourage, you know,
• 52:54
  Speaker 7: pharmacy owners and pharmacists to you know, develop their own
• 52:58
  Speaker 7: cheat sheets of that, okay, because that just kind of
• 53:02
  Speaker 7: lets the team know and themselves kind of an accountability
• 53:06
  Speaker 7: thing that you know, you're constantly looking at it. So
• 53:10
  Speaker 7: definitely encouraging to do so.
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: Right and so so, and they don't have to wait
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: to do this today. They could or move forward with this.
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: They could look at their historical twelve month historical and
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: really based on that information, really determine where they've overbought
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: from the wholesale of their primary or have maximized their
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: ratio and been able to maximize their rebates. So you
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: know what I encourage to you know, folks, is don't
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: feel like it has to start today. You could start
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: today and look at your historical and really determine, you know,
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: your letter, your personal letter grade. Did you do a
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: really good job of buying, you know and maximizing rebates
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: and buying outside for extra savings or did you just
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: hit the rebuy button and the simple like that was easy.
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: You know, you don't want the easy button all the
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: time because if you do, I'm betting you that you're
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: losing opportunity for better pricing outside of your primary.
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: Absolutely.
• 54:16
  Speaker 7: And in another thing is if a pharmacy does not
• 54:19
  Speaker 7: have a secondary, that's that's an easy win. They can
• 54:23
  Speaker 7: immediately they should sign up for a secondary to start
• 54:26
  Speaker 7: seeing some savings so not to rely fully on their
• 54:30
  Speaker 7: primary wholesaler.
• 54:31
  Speaker 4: So that's also an important thing.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: Well, again shameless plug. But they can also sign up
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: for match our X and look at over a dozen
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: secondary wholesalers and all in one place.
• 54:41
  Speaker 4: So absolutely so all right, So, if.
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: A pharmacy owner only does one thing after hearing this episode,
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: what should it be?
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, what should it be?
• 54:53
  Speaker 7: Honestly call your primary rep and understand what their contract is.
• 55:00
  Speaker 7: As soon as they do that and they understand their contract,
• 55:03
  Speaker 7: then they can move on the next thing of savings.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: So okay, And so I'm going to ask you one
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: more questions similar, which is the pharmacists who's already done that,
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: who's the experienced person? Give them something? Because you know,
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: this is kind of like a roundtable discussion, right I
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: learned from you, you learn from me. Tell us what
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: else you would teach or at least worth mentioning, reminding
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: and experienced pharmacists who already knows his contract, well, what
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: could they also think about doing that really could help them,
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: you know, put a few you know, extra dollars in
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: their pocket on a monthly basis.
• 55:44
  Speaker 7: What I do see is pharmacies not identifying repeated underwater
• 55:49
  Speaker 7: claims and really predetermining you know what, you know, you
• 55:55
  Speaker 7: can have a pharmacy that dispends a lot of a
• 55:57
  Speaker 7: certain drug because they have a provider right down the
• 56:00
  Speaker 7: road that refers a lot of patience to them, but
• 56:02
  Speaker 7: they struggle with that drug identify those buy them from secondary.
• 56:08
  Speaker 7: It will make a big difference for them for those
• 56:10
  Speaker 7: experienced pharmacists. And another thing is not to give too
• 56:13
  Speaker 7: much to the primary at that point. Some of these
• 56:16
  Speaker 7: experienced pharmacists, you know, they like to get all their
• 56:19
  Speaker 7: brand rebates, which is great, but then they just leave
• 56:22
  Speaker 7: too many dollars on the table from their purchasing from
• 56:26
  Speaker 7: their primary wholesalers. So keep in mind secondary does play
• 56:31
  Speaker 7: a big role.
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: Right. Well, that's great, great, two great takeaways. But I
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: think this episode you really educated.
• 56:42
  Speaker 7: Me on this.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in a lot a lot of ways, And it
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: feels like there's a couple approaches. One is, you know,
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: the student that wants to really understand GCR and follow it,
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: or a simplified approach, which is, here's the fixed dollar out.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: I'm buying outside of my contract, buy some things, buy
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: some brands outside of my contract, and I can not
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: have to go through the you know, the more detailed way.
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: So there's more than one way to skin this cat
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: in saving and maximizing your GCR. Is that fair?
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: Absolutely well, said Johnny.
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: Todd. You've been quiet. It's not like you.
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: No, I'm like you. I was taking notes. I'm learning
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: something here. I mean, there's there's a lot of good
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: information in this episode, and say it's it's neat to
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: see that you've extracted so many years of experience where
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: you were part of a national chain who understood the
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: first steps of operation as someone that was supervising. Then
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: you move up into multiple pharmacies in that independent pharmacy space,
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: and now you're kind of combining the world of a
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: buying group as well as with pharmacy into pennant pharmacy
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: owners and operations. And I think there's a lot of
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: gold in that. So you're gonna have to promise to
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: come back on twerks and dig into another subject because
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: this is this has been great.
• 58:10
  Speaker 4: Sounds good. Thank you so much. This has been great.
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: Guys, all right, Shout out to our listeners, Shout out
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: to our pharmacy technicians, the right hand of our pharmacists
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: helping us build these businesses. This is not about protecting
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: your margin and not changing who you are as a pharmacy.
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: This is about enhancing your profitability. This is about creativity.
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: You are listening right now, you're coming up with ideas.
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: If you'd like to share those ideas, if you'd like
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: to engage with Johnny and in the matt Ars team,
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: please reach out to Johnny. He's all about getting people
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: involved in conversations to really change the game and the
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: profitability and what twenty twenty six has to bring us.
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: Johnny Kello and the match Arks team, this has been
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: tremendous and we thank you so much for bringing us
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: great another great inview here on twerks.
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks Toad. I really enjoyed this one as well. Again,
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: every one of these it seems like I learned a lot,
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: not just a few things. But again, I'm not a pharmacist,
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: so I think that I've got more runway than the
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: average listener. But I still love hearing these and it
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: really get really good pointers to pass along to our
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: members as well.
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: Hey, if you missed episode one and two, do not worry.
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: We have a link in the show notes. It'll take
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: you to all three episodes and it'll make it easy
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: to access. And if you have any questions, please reach
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: out to The MATROX team at matcharx dot com can't
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: wait to see you at a conference out there, Johnny,
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much, Todd, have a great day.
• 59:51
  Speaker 6: Feeling lost with the complexities of pharmacy accounting.
• 59:55
  Speaker 8: In pharmacy today, there's so many different variables and issues
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 8: that impact the pharmacy, books, records, accounting, the profitabilities, so
• 1:00:04
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• 1:00:07
  Speaker 8: its own nuances from an accounting standpoint, and so it's
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 8: it's tricky, there's no doubt about it.
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  Speaker 6: Ready to take your pharmacy to the next level, but
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  Speaker 8: If you're interested in, you know, working with a team
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  Speaker 6: With get the financial check up your pharmacy needs and
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 6: head over to Sykes HYPHENCPA dot com or call two
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 6: five to two four eight two seven six four four.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: Hey, first up on twerks. Welcome back, mister Greg Rivald.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: It's it's good to have you back on twerks so
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: quickly because I have a lot of questions for you,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: my friend.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 9: Yes, sir, thrilled to be back here. As always a big,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 9: big week in pharmacy, so lots lots to talk about.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: I want you to take over because there's something that's
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: happening at the federal level that impacted PBM reform, there's
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: something at the FTC level that now impacts the profession
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: and pharmacy as well.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 10: Break those two down for.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: Me, yeah, for us, Yeah, I promise you I will
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: do my best.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 9: There's there's so much to you know, really so much
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 9: to unpack here. But what I would say, big picture,
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 9: one of the biggest weeks we've seen, probably the biggest
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 9: week we've seen federally in pharmacy. And I don't I
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 9: don't want to be bombastic here, right, but I think
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 9: that that's accurate to say at this point. What we
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 9: saw this week is as part of the large reconciliation
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 9: budget bill, you know, there were significant PPM reform provisions
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 9: included within that, right and a lot of these provisions
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 9: are core provisions from pharmacy's own Congressman Buddy Carter's bill
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 9: that he had and also consistent with what was so
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 9: heartbreaking for so many folks back in twenty twenty four,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 9: you know, as it was getting ready to be included
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 9: in the year end package, and then there was a
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 9: sort of a tweet that shall go unnamed that sort
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 9: of unraveled all of that, Right, and so we're in
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 9: a position now where we are seeing probably not probably,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 9: we're seeing the strongest, most meaningful PBM reforms ever implemented
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 9: and signed into law. Right, so passed and signed into
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 9: the law this week. I would say, in broad stroke,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 9: what you'll see here is that, you know, in the
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 9: part D space, you've got sort of this D linking concept,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 9: which is, hey, PBMs, you can be paid a bona
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 9: fide service fee, but you know you can't make money
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 9: off the price of a drug, right, so powerful concept.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 9: There's a lot of technicalities there and a lot of
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 9: I would say nuance that has to be worked through.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 9: But conceptually, hey, PBMs, you can't exploit the price of
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 9: a drugrug. Pretty powerful concept to get into law.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 9: In terms of pharmacy reimbursement, you've got these reasonable and
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 9: relevant requirements that calls on CMS to promaate regulations to
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 9: ensure pharmacies are getting reasonable and relevant reimbursements, as well
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 9: as treating some sort of certain pharmacies a little bit
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 9: different to kind of protect them based on size or
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 9: area and so. And then there's I would say, really
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 9: significant reporting requirements as well. So this is I think
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 9: it's very important to say, like, this is not the end, right,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 9: I think this is the important thing is that he
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 9: is this going to be a catalyst to more reforms
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 9: to protect patients, more reforms to ensure the sustainability of pharmacy.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 9: I hope very much so that that's the case. But
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 9: this is a significant, significant victory. You know, a lot
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 9: of folks have worked really hard on this. Frankly, I'm
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 9: probably not the best person to be sitting here talking
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 9: about it, right because I would say, you've got I mean, boy,
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 9: you get philosophical, and I think of like Doug Collins, right,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 9: who's in the President Trump's cabinet now, and he was
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 9: a leader on PBM reform, you know, going back in
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 9: you know, the early twenty tens. And obviously Congressman Buddy
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 9: Carter has worked so hard on this his you know,
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 9: his staff, Jack Gander, they've worked so hard. In NCPA
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 9: has worked really hard on this reform as well. So
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 9: I think it's a hopefully a special moment for pharmacy,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 9: I would add, you know, from a policy perspective, I
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 9: think there's a lot of work to do to protect
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 9: pharmacists and will of course be working to hopefully advance
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 9: pharmacists fight back in that regard, but this is a
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 9: moment that hopefully pharmacy should saber and the folks who've
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 9: worked so hard on it. So on top of that, right,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 9: like as though that wasn't enough, we saw a major
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 9: settlement come out with the.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: FTC and Express Scripts, Right, Obviously, the FTC has been
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: doing ongoing work.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 9: In connection with PBMs and a six piece study, and
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 9: you know, they brought actions against the Big three PBM
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 9: and connection with high insulin prices, and what you see
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 9: is really some fascinating some fascinating things that are coming
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 9: out of that. You know, APCI, who I work with,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 9: has been a long time proponent of the Section five
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 9: of the FTC Act, which is unfair methods of competition
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 9: and really believing that a lot of PBM practices fall
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 9: into that unfair methods of competition, and you know, it's
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 9: something we've certainly been hopeful to see.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: The FTC utilize.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 9: And so, you know, from it's kind of right, but
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 9: from my perspective, it was really exciting to see that
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 9: sort of serve as a basis for you know, really
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 9: a lot of what the FTC was doing there. And again,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 9: a lot of folks in the community pharmacy space have
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 9: worked really hard to engage with the FTC. The FTC
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 9: team has worked really hard and continues to work hard,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 9: and so just so encouraging. There are a lot of
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 9: really good, interesting things within this settlement, you know, perfect no, right,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 9: there's I think there's a lot of nuance and we're
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 9: still unpacking a lot of that nuance.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 3: Maybe, you know, maybe.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 9: We can discuss that, Todd, you and I on the
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 9: PBM Reform podcast or some other some other forum. But
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 9: it's a big deal, right, You got the you got
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 9: you could argue, right, yes, I waving the white flag
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 9: here and resolving these allegations and agreeing to behavior or
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 9: agreeing to practices that is going to hopefully curb some
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 9: of the more unfair practices we see implemented by large ppms.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: More and more is taking place to really make the
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: long lasting changes that we've all known had to be
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: made of simple things like if you're an insurance company,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: you can own a pharmacy because it's just too much
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: intertwining of rates of services and reimbursement and patient steering
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: and so it's just like it's just bad business. And
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: we saw it happen. I know the majority of our
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: listeners probably don't remember this, but the divestiture of the
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: Baby Bells and Learning, you know, our AT and T
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: into seven separate organizations because telecommunications was being rained by
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: one organization, and the government the FTC is like, hey,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: this is dangerous for the telephone and telecommunication infrastructure of
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: our nation. We cannot allow one organization to have that
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: much power over its people. Well, guess what you're saying
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: the same damn thing, but with people's health.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 10: You're saying the.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: Health of the nation cannot be controlled by three bohemoth
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: PBMs who are literally in some ways killing people. I mean,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: there are people that have died because of PBM policies.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 10: They might not have attended that to.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: Happen, but it's the domino effect of things that have
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: happened that I think of Bill Schmidtnick and his family.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: Then you and I have spent lots of time with
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: Bill and his family. And this is what the truth
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: that's coming out. It's and by the way, it's black
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: and white data. It's not any embellishing, we're not hyperboil.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: We're like, we really want actually I want PBMs to
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: do what they originally did. They were wonderful and it
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: really made things simple and you know, access to formula
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: y information and it was great.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 10: Well, go back to the value that you bring.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: And I don't have to tell you this, but you
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: and I know that it's never going back to the
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: way it was.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 10: It's it's from this point forward. It's it's really changing.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 5: It is it is.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 9: And listen, I think if you're behind the pharmacy counter,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 9: the way it feels like when is helped going to
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 9: come right, and we've seen but when you look at
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 9: sort of in the aggregate the work that's been done
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 9: in states, and now you see like real reform happening
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 9: at the federal level. I'm a broken record on this, Todd,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 9: but you know, it is hard to pass a bill right.
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 9: And you know, there are so many organizations, so many
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 9: professions that advocate forever and never make any progress right,
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 9: and we're go, you know, this advocacy attempts are being
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 9: made to reform the practices of amongst the biggest companies
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 9: on Earth, amongst the richest companies on Earth, you know,
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 9: with armies of lobbyists, and so to see the reforms
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 9: that are happening at the state level, at the pace
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 9: that they're happening, and to see you know, meaningful reform
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 9: happening at the federal level, and to see the action
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 9: that the FTC has taken, I think it's a good boy.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 9: You know, Friday afternoon, it's a good time to take
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 9: a step back and reflect a little bit about how
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 9: far the advocacy fight has come. And does does that
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 9: mean the work is over? Absolutely not. I would argue
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 9: it's you know, it's time to really now, it's time
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 9: to roll back up the enjoy this weekend and then
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 9: it's time to get to work because there's.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 3: A lot more work to do.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 9: But there's a lot for pharmacy to be proud of,
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 9: a lot for you know, community pharmacists to be proud of.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: And again, you know, I think.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 9: Kudos to Congressman Buddy Carter at NCPA on this. Who've
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 9: you know who've worked on this issue for a long time.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: Absolutely absolutely just to shout out to all of them,
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: many of them I've been able to meet in person
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: and see the passion in their eyes and and how
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: it attributes back to you know, Buddy was a pharmacist
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: in his community and a pharmacy owner and he saw
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: it firsthand of what it did to not only his
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: own business and livelihood, but with the impact that it had.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 10: On his community, and he hated it.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: He was you know, he told me that's part of
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: the reason now he sees he sees being a state
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: representative from so many different angles, and he has a
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: lot of expertise and things that he's not an expert
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: in that he can really leverage.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 4: So yeah, that's awesome.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 9: And again, like you know, no time to list everybody,
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 9: but when you just look in the agg or get
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 9: obviously you know comes from the Harsh Barger and James Comer,
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 9: you know, and the hearings Chairman of Oversight, right. I mean,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 9: there's so many and Senate Finance has done amazing we can't.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 3: Name them all.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 9: But it's again, I think it's a good time late,
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 9: you know, Friday afternoon, it's a good time for folks
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 9: to reflect. Don wow, like, when when have we ever
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 9: seen this much federal activity on this issue? And it's
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 9: you know, it's significant, and I hope from a policy perspective,
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 9: and we'll be having more policy conversations on PBM Reform
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 9: Podcast and doing deep dives right because you know, there
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 9: there's work to do, and so my hope is that
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 9: this is very much. Hey, we appreciate the work that's
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 9: been done and hope this is a catalyst for more
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 9: good work to come.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 2: I tell you what, Greg gets so good to have
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: you give us this update. He really makes it more
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: simplified and understand it. I am excited that we're going
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: to continue the PBM Reform Podcast. If you're listening, if
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: you have a state representative that you know it wants
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: to talk with Greg, that wants to get involved, that
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 2: wants to continue to refine this from that state perspective
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: as well as what's going to happen at the federal level.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 10: Reach out to Greg. He's a huge resource.
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much, APCI for your support of the
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: PBM Reform podcast. We're actually making so many more connections now,
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: especially through like LinkedIn and in Instagram, or we're getting
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: new listeners listening to this podcast where they are getting
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: feedback where they're saying, wow, I can listen to updates
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: on things that I didn't understand what that meant. And
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: now we have someone that is either a pharmacy owner
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: or a state representative or somebody like you, Greg who's
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: in the thick of it.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 10: So thank you so much for giving us an update.
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 9: Now, thank you, And yeah, I'm going to give you
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 9: a real quick shout out here because you know, on
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 9: the Pharmacy Podcast Network, right, I mean, you've been a
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 9: magnifying voice of issues for pharmacists across the spectrum, right,
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 9: not just on PBM reform, but that said, you were
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 9: calling attention to PBM reform before it was cool as
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 9: they say, right, And so I hope, I hope that
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 9: you're taking some satisfaction here on a Friday afternoon as well.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 10: Absolutely.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: Hey, And speaking of this, this is the most important
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: question I asked this. I mean, I ask this of
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: our other guests on twerks today. But is it is
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: it Patriots or is it the Seattle Seahawks?
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 9: Oh, Lauren, I bet you're gonna have to stay neutral
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 9: on that one. But you know I'd say this, right. Uh,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 9: Seattle didn't have the have the trophies the Patriots do,
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 9: so we'll go with them.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm gonna go with the Seahawks because I do
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: not want the Patriots to have more Super Bowls than
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: the Pittsburgh Steelers.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they've got enough, Right, They've got enough.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: All right, Greg, Thanks for being a guest on twerks. Hey, listen, listeners,
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: We're going to be right back. Hey, welcome back to
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: this Week in Pharmacy. Thanks for staying and being part
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: of this. The feedback that we get through LinkedIn, the
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: feedback that we're getting on our YouTube channel, you're asking
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: a lot of great questions. This is a shout out
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: to you too, the listener. If there's a subject that's
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: that's impacting our profession, and if it's education, artificial intelligence,
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: long term care, clinical trial, bringing clinical trials closer to community.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: There's a lot happening and things are speeding up. You
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: did hear me mention artificial intelligence, and I think we're
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: doing six episodes per week, five six episodes per week,
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: and it's up to like two potentially three episodes per
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: week that will include how important it is to understand
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: the end leverage properly evidence based technologies into our specific
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: sectors of pharmacy. And there's a group out there that
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: is really coming heavy into different sectors of pharmacy. And
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: we're going to be doing some additional deep dive podcasts.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: We're going to invite other organizations out there who are
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: as dedicated as this team is. I'd like to welcome
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: Jonathan Adley from TJM Labs to Twerks.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 11: Welcome to Twerks, buddy, Thanks Dott, I'm super excited to
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 11: be here.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 4: All right. I'm telling you what.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: As fast as the profession is changing, as fast as
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: our pharmacist's roles are changing, and how they're going to
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: start digging deep into clinical navigation, of treatment management and
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: of suggestion and of really becoming closer to the patient
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: and having the ability to leverage pharmacogenomics data and having
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: the ability to dive down into you know, in vitro
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: fertilization and contraception, and there's so many there's so many
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 2: verticals right now, Jonathan, to empower pharmacists. And now you
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: guys are coming very intimately into the pharmacy space by
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: so many of your partnerships based in the pharmacy profession.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: This is like two things CALLI at the same time.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: The role of the pharmacy is changing, and now TJM
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 2: Labs comes into the picture to accelerate that based on
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 2: some trust of what you've already built in infrastructure. So
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: kick us off, tell us quickly, because I have other
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: questions for you.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 4: Who is TJM Labs. What do you guys do?
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 5: Awesome?
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 11: Awesome, So TJM Labs we are workflow pharmacy automation company,
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 11: specifically AI automation. There is some old fashioned automation and
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 11: there is newer kind of automation that is AI based.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 11: The thing that we do is essentially automate. The core
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 11: product that we offer is automate data entry. So if
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 11: you think about facts is coming through the pharmacy, E
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 11: prescription refills some of our long term companies they do
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 11: like mid trick, some of them they do chart review
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 11: all of this stuff. These spots can do it right,
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 11: and we like to exciply in these spots as a
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 11: digital technician, which is able to work twenty four to seven,
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 11: you know, a NonStop and depending any pharmacy management system
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 11: and a complexity. Sometimes it works a little bit faster,
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 11: sometimes it's a little bit slower.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's always adjustments.
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 11: There's always adjustment, but it is pharmacy specific. I am
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 11: a pharmacist, right Meghan, Our chief operating officer is a pharmacist,
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 11: and we basically the company is built for by pharmacist
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 11: for pharmacies with I would say, a lot of domain
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 11: expertise in Pacific pharmacy workflows.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 2: That's blowing my mind and getting me excited because, like
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: I said in the opening, pharmacists are now going to
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: become leaders in disease state management, best best care practices,
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 2: personalized medicine, and experience.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 4: Neutral genomics is part of this.
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: Where a cancer patient that's suffering, you know, maybe their
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: first chemotherapy experience, they feel crappy, and then all of
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: a sudden, the pharmacist is really helping to minimize that
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: as much as possible with nutrition or vitamins or whatever
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: goes along with the medications.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 4: That's special. And if we had an AI engine to.
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 2: Start collecting information like the patient's response based and app
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: that you give them, or how they're feeling down to
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 2: the one through ten scale or anything that you can
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 2: personalize and even use gamification to get their response, if
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: you could funnel that into an AI engine, and I'll
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: back then into our pharmacy management systems to really respond
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: from two sides, process and getting the prescription out as
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: safely as possible, which is the commitment obviously of the
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: groundwork of pharmacists, but the more important side is reacting
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 2: to clinical information, journal articles and the response from the
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: patient of how things are going in a specific segment
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: of treatment. And then now have having your lab organization
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: infuse and react. I mean, that's the future of you know,
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: pharmacy care in my opinion.
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean, we always say that AI agents are
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 11: meant for tedious work. Let AI do the tedious work
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 11: and let humans do the personal and warm touch. So
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 11: if you think about it, you know, typically we all
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 11: have worked in a pharmacy before six.
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 5: Out of the eight hours we spend in there, if.
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 11: You're lucky, are just tedious work. You're literally sitting on
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 11: a screen, heading the keyboard and clicking the mass with
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 11: very little judgment and nuance.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 5: And in two.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 11: Hours, could be consulting, could be vision care, could be
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 11: truly intellectual activities, and we say, well, you don't have
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 11: to do the TDA stuff anymore. Right, it could be
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 11: all it could be all bevis care, and then we'll
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 11: have the AI do all the tedos stuff.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: Hey, so our common friend Ross on your team gave
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: me a shout out on LinkedIn, and I like how
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: interactive your team is on LinkedIn because that's still a
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: platform that I see a big differentiation between Facebook and
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: other platforms that are more consumer driven. I trust my
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: LinkedIn network, like everybody that's in my network is like
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: the real deal, and every time they talk about something,
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 2: it's like I'm getting it from the source. Like, as
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: a publisher, it's a dream and I love this. So
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: in this AI space, you're mixed into pharmacy already. Your
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 2: client base is freaking amazing. Will put a link into
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 2: some of the things you guys have worked on. But
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: you're releasing a book that's really going to help us
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: dial into and getting more out of thinking about how
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 2: should AI impact the business that I am running as
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: a pharmacist in order for me to assure that I'm
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: developing developing the best treatment for my patients and my
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: families of my patients, but then turn around and being
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 2: able to operationalize my reporting and my staffing and my
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is like I said, it's it's two
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: things coming together. Would you give the listeners a kind
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: of a quick overview of your book? And we got
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: we got to get our hands on it, so let
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 2: us know how to get our hands on it too.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 11: Yeah, So we wrote this book just to let the
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 11: audience know we really wrote it for one simple reason.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 11: We want to help pharmacy succeed. Our company gets bigger
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 11: when our pharmacies succeed. It's as simple as that. And
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 11: if you look on the surface at least, the pharmacy
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 11: business is really tough right now. I don't know, it's
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 11: not a long ago and write eight one bankrupt and
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 11: right after it, Walt Green's was taken by Brevet Private
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 11: Equity and they said publicly they're going to break it
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 11: into pieces and sell it.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 5: Everybody knows how.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 11: Bbm's kind of routinely reimpurse pharmacies blow cost labor expenses
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 11: with inflation just continue to rise and rise, so your
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 11: costs are getting higher and higher if you run a pharmacy,
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 11: and you're not getting any additional revenue. So if you're
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 11: sitting there, it could feel like it's impossible to get ahead, right,
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 11: but it's not. We're so lucky in our companies that
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 11: because we work with hundreds of pharmacies and we're not
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 11: just like a tick vendor where we don't interact with them.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 11: It's a partnership. We see their businesses, we see what
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 11: makes them successful. We over the last two years, we
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 11: saw a few things that pharmacies can do that essentially
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 11: make them stand out and make them you know, eight
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 11: figure pharmacies as we like to call it, right, and
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 11: the eight figure is one hundred million, So you know
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 11: that's basically can you run a pharmacy and get it
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 11: one hundred million?
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 5: And what would it take to do that? And we
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 5: kind of.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 3: Broke it down into nice nine.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 11: Chapters, and there's a conclusion chapter of things like fundamental
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 11: frameworks that pharmacies can use to grow from a job
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 11: into a business, right.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 2: So that's incredible. That's a good preview. We will have
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: a link in the show notes to get you there.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: We'll make sure that we're getting you back in touch
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: with tj M Labs.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 4: That's t j M.
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 2: Labs dot com. What pharmacy conferences are you coming up on?
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: Because I think we're actually attending several together. You're going
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: to be going to which one next?
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 5: Yeah?
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 11: So we as a company are going to the Pennsylvania
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 11: Pharmacy Association of Pharmacies. That's coming up, I believe in
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 11: two weeks in February. There's also the NCBA Multi Store Conference.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 5: In March. We have three conferences.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 11: We have the Alliance of Pharmacy Compounding, We have the
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 11: Pharmacy Profit Summit.
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 5: We also have a TREM twenty four.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 11: I am a banelist or a speaker and two of
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 11: these conferences.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 5: We're also doing.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 11: A podcast with the Alliance of Pharmacy Compounding just before
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 11: the conference. So we should hear a lot from us
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 11: in the coming few days. And obviously that I know
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 11: you're very active in the conference circle, so you're probably
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 11: going to be in all of these conferences.
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 5: But the idea for us is we know our product work.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 11: Well, you know, lots of pharmacies kind of give us
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 11: great feedback. And the idea is we.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 5: Want to know.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 11: We want to let people know that this exists, that
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 11: AI is here. It's been here for two and a
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 11: half years.
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 5: It is not new, it is.
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 11: Not experimental at this point, there is. We feel like
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 11: Lisa Fast, who's.
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 5: An advisor to our company, likes to say AI or die.
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 5: And maybe it was.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 11: Hyperbowl a year ago or two years ago, but it's
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 11: not anymore right, and it is truly the next stage
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 11: of any business. It's not just pharmacy where you have
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 11: to automate and you have to have good infrastructure to
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 11: scale as you move forward, where everything like AI is
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 11: basically in everything that you do, every product and in
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 11: every interaction, there's going to be some kind of AI
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 11: in it.
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: All right, Yeah, but here's here's my pushback to you
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 2: for just you see, you came on twerks thinking it
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 2: was going to.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 4: Be softball stuff.
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 5: I like it, all right.
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: The difference between I'm trying to build a specialty pharmacy,
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: I have an infusion arm to it. I have a
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 2: special relationship with a network of physicians that know me,
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: trust me, I want to make some deviations. I want
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: to go into a different disease state. I get to
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 2: come to an organization that already understands that language, the positioning,
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: the structure, the clinical the freaking You're a pharmacist, for
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 2: God's sakes.
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 4: You have pharmacics on your team. You have all this
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 4: contextual structure. So here's the thing.
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 2: Just like anything with the invention, the invention of the wheel, right,
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 2: everybody got the wheel. It was the people that knew
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 2: how to use that wheel in a very specific manner
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 2: for a very specific job and for a very specific position.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: And if you go out to just any old AI, oh,
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: I'll do it myself, And you're like, are you kidding me? Like,
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: get involved with organizations who understand the outcomes because they've
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: already tried it in very specific instances that pharmacology came
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: into play and being able to leverage that.
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 5: Yeah, no percent.
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 11: I mean, if you ask me today, what makes your
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 11: company different than the million AI companies that are sprouting
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 11: is the domain expertise. So we have about like fifty
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 11: five people in a company today. Forty five of these
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 11: are user, a pharmacist, or an engineer. So we have
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 11: whenever we run an implementation or work was a pharmacy,
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 11: there's a pharmacist running the show.
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 5: They're the project manager, right.
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 11: And the only way it would work is this way,
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 11: because you cannot replace domain expertise. You cannot have someone
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 11: who's been working in a pharmacy and understand all the rules,
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 11: the nuances, the edge cases for ten years.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 5: There's just no way you can replace that experience with
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 5: anything else.
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 2: So I also want to just make reference to when
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: we bring a lot of things to twerks, we always
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 2: like to bring people that have vision then not just
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 2: building something amazing and not just doing what you're doing,
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 2: which I'm kind of preparing for the future. So I'm
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 2: sharing with the listeners now that on the blog right
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 2: before as the hall. It's so funny when when content
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 2: and when announcements come come out during the Christmas season,
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 2: like everybody like ignores what the heck's going on, and
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: then when we get back and by the time we
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 2: hit February, like we're ready, We're all ready to build
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 2: business like right now, right there was there was a
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 2: press release that came out on December twenty ninth, like
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: who releases on December twenty ninth.
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 4: Goodness, gracious, everybody's like in Christmas mode.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: But fighting is you guys, closed ten million dollar series
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 2: led by Arthur Ventures. Congratulations. But the reason why I'm
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 2: excited about this is we get to we get to
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 2: take our positioning as a profession by being able to
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 2: partner with organizations that have that domain expertise and over
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 2: and over again, get to tap into, yeah, the understanding
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 2: of what it means to be a pharmacist in a
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 2: very specific situation.
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 11: Yeah, And we called this in our book, right, So
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 11: obviously we were racing to close our seriesa before the
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 11: year end just because of tax reasons and all of
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 11: that stuff, but we call it in our book. One
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 11: of the chapters is about if you have something that
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 11: is working. Most people mistake is not sink big enough, right, Like,
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 11: if you have a pharmacy and the pharmacy is successful
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 11: and it's growing, that's it, right. They don't think, Okay,
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 11: what is like, how could it be then x bigger?
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 11: How could it be one hundred x bigger?
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 11: And if you look at the pharmacy kind of landscape. Unfortunately,
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 11: let's just talk about pharmacy management system. The average pharmacy
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 11: management system is like twenty years old, right. It is
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 11: dominated by private equity, you know, financially incentivized companies that
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 11: don't really like to invest in their software. They like
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 11: to extract rent and basically have you bay your monthly fees,
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 11: really giving anything back and improving the software. There haven't
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 11: been any serious investment in the pharmacy ecosystem. A lot
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 11: of companies start trying to build per phormacies, but they
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 11: don't have the domain expertise and they basically pivot to
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 11: do something else. Luckily for us, we have the domain expertise.
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 11: We do have the engineering expertise as well, not only
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 11: in a pharmacist and also an engineer.
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 5: And it is the right time.
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 11: We think AI can be transformed transformative. If you just
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 11: look at the public companies today, software companies there are
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 11: basically being destroyed because everybody looks at AI companies and
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 11: they say, hey, they can move ten times faster and
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 11: they can give us like better product. And not only
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 11: it's not just software where someone has to go and
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 11: click and do things, but it's software that just essentially
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 11: does the work for you. Right, So today, like in pharmacy,
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 11: you go in, you buy I don't know some soft
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 11: dashboard pharmacy dashboard that show you stuff. You still have
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 11: to go in and you have to read and you
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 11: have to come up with what they're going to do
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 11: with that data.
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 5: But AI companies function a little bit different.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 11: They say, we are going to look at all the data,
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 11: We're going to identify the interventions, right, and we're going
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 11: to give it to you an end and you have
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 11: to approve, right.
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 5: And that's the difference.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 11: When we do our automation, it's literally the view prescriptions
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 11: come in, the facts come in, how our team sits
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 11: with you, gets all the details, the nuances, what is
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 11: different about your parmacy and everybody else, and then the
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 11: boche's works in the background. That's it, right, So it's
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 11: going to be a very exciting time over the next
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 11: three to five years.
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 2: I would say, So, you know, that's it's great when
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 2: you hear it from you know, the leadership level, someone
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 2: at your level, the CEO that's leading the company. But
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 2: then if I jump into a team that surrounds you,
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 2: you got to bring heavy hitters, and you have to
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 2: bring once again, domain not domain knowledge. Because I'm not
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 2: a good CEO. I think I'd be good at business development.
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 2: You know, I lead this publication, but I know my
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 2: weaknesses and I know my strengths, and you being able
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 2: to leverage a dream team of people who have domain
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 2: experience kind of give a quick overview. We'll have separate
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: we'll have other twerques out there that will feature these people.
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 4: But talk to me about Meghan and.
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 2: NASA and mister Ross Miller at a little bit more
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 2: about the team.
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so these guys are the dream team.
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 11: Basically we At some point your job as a CEO
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 11: transforms from doing things to building the team that builds
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 11: the team if you look.
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 5: So.
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 11: Meghan is a pharmacist. She was our first employee ever.
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 11: She has experience in user experience and design, which again
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 11: very very rare for pharmacists. She truly thinks about how
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 11: could we make the experience of the people on the
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 11: front line as exceptional as possible?
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 5: Right, And the company.
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 11: Was basically built while she was in the front line,
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 11: very early on. Abdullah is our engine director of engineering.
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 11: Now he was our surge employee. He took over, so
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 11: I started as the first engineer and he took over
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 11: every single I do, and he runs our engineering department.
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 11: Now again we are we take a lot of pride
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 11: in our engineering where it is.
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 5: There's still was.
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 11: AI now, like you can generate a lot of code
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 11: really quickly, but there's that craftsmanship.
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 5: We called it pharmaceutical elegance.
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 11: Like if you're in the pharmacy and you're doing compounding,
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 11: you can just mix a compound really.
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 2: Couill listen, my dad was an electrician. Every electrician, the
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 2: people that had two hours of experience and the people
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: that had, you know, eighty years of experience. You gave
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 2: him a screwdriver, right, yes, already had the same screwdriver.
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 2: How are you I kind of use that screwdriver better?
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 2: And you know that's some analogy, but it's definitely AI
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 2: toot on hand.
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 5: Yes, there's the craftsmanship.
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 11: I think you're never going to be able to take
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 11: that away, which you see it in pharmacies was pharmaceutical elegance.
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 11: Hannah is basically our implementation superstar, right, so she manages
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 11: all implementations very you know, just a pharmacist loves pharmacy,
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 11: really works well with other pharmacies. Sometimes some pharmacies are organized,
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 11: sometimes they're not organized, but we take them all and
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 11: you probably saw us and LinkedIn. He's very very active
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 11: comes from enterprise software. Has been on Monday dot Com,
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 11: have been in Microsoft fifteen years if basically doing sales,
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 11: and he's our VP of sales now and he's basically
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 11: building a whole sales org under them. So I would say,
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 11: you know, some of it is luck. Definitely, Sometimes you
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 11: hire people, things do not work out. But I would
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 11: say our first forty or so employees have been all
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 11: been exceptional and in the life of the company we
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 11: have not lost We only lost two people out of
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 11: fifty five, which is again exceptional retention. So you know,
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 11: hopefully we can continue this way so well.
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 2: When you find people that are part of a mission,
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 2: it becomes more than just a job. It becomes something
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 2: that you really want to have an impact. And that's
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: that's the way I feel about publishing. That's why I
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 2: was working a full time position up until twenty nineteen
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 2: and doing a podcast development and publishing on the side,
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 2: and I had to decide, Hey, if this is ever
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 2: going to become something, it's time to do it. One
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 2: hundred percent of my dedication yea to empower other people.
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 2: And that's exactly what you're doing as the leader at
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 2: TGM Labs. You're You're literally the guy who's supporting all
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 2: of them. They're coming to you to become enhanced, and
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 2: then your client is also doing the exact same thing.
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: So I absolutely love this domino effect of what's happening.
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 2: And it's an exciting time to be in the profession.
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 4: I'll tell you that, Yeah, it is.
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 11: And you know, as a CEO, you have to fire
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 11: yourself from a job every three months, literally, like you know,
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 11: so I know we've we've been doing that. So I'm
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 11: looking forward to firing myself from some of the legal
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 11: and Bible work stuff that I have to do now,
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 11: so that would be exciting.
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 2: Well, it's so good to have you. I've been looking
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 2: forward to getting you on twerks. We're excited to do
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 2: some other future interviews. Every single one of the conferences
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: I think that you're mentioning. I think we're almost going
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 2: to all of them. So we're going to make sure
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 2: that we get you back on the shows to give
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 2: us some insights.
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 4: And I got to get Ross on. I need to
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 4: talk to him. I really enjoy his style.
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 2: I'm kind of like more of a I'm closer to
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 2: a Ross and personality of Ross than I am with you, Jonathan,
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 2: just just to be upfront, because I I like one.
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 4: Hundred percent marketing.
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 5: I'm a bret nerd. Right, I'm a big nerd. We
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 5: can talk about engineering all day long. Right, And you know, I.
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 11: Think we missed really well as a group. So Meghan
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 11: is like pursue of excellence. She's super detailed oriented, has
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 11: this like very artistic good taste. Right, I'm not I
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 11: don't have good taste, like what color is that? Shoul
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 11: choose all lot of stuff. Ross doesn't have either, And
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 11: I think I'm a big, big nerd right. And Ross
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 11: is very very like outgoing and social and likes to
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 11: talk to people.
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 5: So good group to work with.
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 4: So I tell you what it's.
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 2: I think of the possibilities of what's going to happen
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 2: over the next two to five years, and how pharmacy
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 2: is going to look so vastly different and excited to
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 2: a scene where it came from.
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 4: It's so fun.
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 2: We've been podcasting seventeen years to be able to track
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 2: what is what was the profession like seventeen years ago?
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 2: And I'm going to start cataloging a lot of that
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 2: information so that you can kind of look back to
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 2: the history of our profession based on, you know, launching
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 2: the industry's first podcast in two thousand and nine.
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that's amazing.
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 11: Seventeen years, right the podcast was a kid, they would
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 11: be ready to go to college.
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 4: That's true.
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 2: And you know what, this this beast of a thing
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 2: that I've worked on for seventeen years. It's time to
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 2: get kick his ass out and make making his father.
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 5: Money exactly right.
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: So that's what I'm doing.
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 2: I have the most important question of our podcast today
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 2: on Twitch.
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 4: So I'm going to ask.
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 2: You is who are you voting for in the Super
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 2: Bowl this weekend?
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 5: Oh man?
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 11: So I want to Basically grew up in New York, right,
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 11: and my first experience was football was watching the Giants
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 11: beat the Patriots like every time they played in the
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 11: Super Bowl. So there's no way I can cheer for
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 11: the Patriots.
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 2: Nice, we're all the same team, Listen. I have selfish reasons,
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 2: So I don't want the Patriots to get more Super
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 2: Bowl rings than the Pittsburgh Steelers because it's I'm a
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 2: Steelers fan, so I'll vote for anyone else. And by
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 2: the way, if you think about it, there were some
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 2: very bad calls in the Super Bowl between the Seahawks
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 2: and the Steelers.
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 4: I feel it's like this, it's their turn to, you.
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 2: Know, get it, because there are just a couple of
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 2: things you know that I even questionable as a Steeler fan.
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 4: But I'm excited this weekend. I don't want to see
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 4: football go. I'm a football guy.
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean, you know, neon'ng Glad have been winning
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 11: too many Super Bowls. Respect a hustle, right, you know, respect,
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 11: you know what they're doing, but enough, you know, they
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 11: don't want enough with someone else.
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 2: The Pittsburgh Steelers need ai. They need like a TJM.
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 2: Labs to come in and revitolize everything because it's kind
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 2: of a mishmash pish pash.
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 4: Who knows which ash situation right now?
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 11: Well, actually that's so, that's a badge. We need to
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 11: earn get one of the sports team pharmacies. We have
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 11: the Congress pharmacy, right, we have some of.
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 4: The sports pharmacy too. We have that guy in Miami.
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 11: We don't we don't have a football team pharmacy, but
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 11: we'll go out and find one.
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 5: So all right, I'll.
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: Take it exactly.
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 2: All right, Well, I wish you a wonderful weekend. Thank
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 2: you so much for being a guest on this Week
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 2: in Pharmacy, and we're gonna we're gonna talk more. We're
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 2: gonna have you back. We got we've got a lot
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 2: of subjects that we can dive into.
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 11: Awesome DoD Yeah, I'm very excited to always come back
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 11: and talk. So thank you for for hosting me.
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 4: All Right, you've been listening, Towers. Here we go, No