Latest / Pharmacy Podcast Network / Beyond Dispensing: Building a Pharmacy Around Medication Management and Community Care | SuiteCast

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Beyond Dispensing: Building a Pharmacy Around Medication Management and Community Care | SuiteCast · Pharmacy Podcast Network

0:08
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Pharmacy Podcast Network.
0:20
Speaker 2: Welcome to Sweetcast, a podcast sponsored by SweetRx Pharmacy Technology Platforms,
0:26
Speaker 2: exploring the strategies, technologies, and leadership practices helping pharmacies improve performance,
0:32
Speaker 2: expand patient care, and build sustainable revenue.
0:37
Speaker 1: A Massachusetts-based pharmacy services company who specializes in medication management
0:42
Speaker 1: and delivery for residential programs, assisted living communities and group homes,
0:47
Speaker 1: even hospice providers and organizations serving people with intellectual and
0:52
Speaker 1: developmental disabilities is stemmed and it's completely put into motion
1:01
Speaker 1: through passion. And this is from a man who believes
1:04
Speaker 1: in people, who cares about people. who's been part of
1:08
Speaker 1: his community in the capacity of serving pharmacy services for
1:12
Speaker 1: over 30 years. I want to welcome President and CEO
1:16
Speaker 1: of Pelmeds to the Sweetcast, Buran Patel.
1:20
Speaker 2: Buran, it's so good to have you here.
1:23
Speaker 3: Todd, thank you so much for having me, and thanks
1:25
Speaker 3: to Nick and SRX for recommending me to be on
1:28
Speaker 3: this podcast. I appreciate it. Absolutely.
1:30
Speaker 1: The Sweetcast, this is the second episode. It's been exciting
1:34
Speaker 1: to work with Nicholas and his team at SuiteRx and
1:38
Speaker 1: the SuiteWorks team. We rely on his organization as an
1:44
Speaker 1: extension of our operations. We have a team member that
1:49
Speaker 1: works with the SuiteWorks team in Cebu. A shout out
1:53
Speaker 1: to Andrea, and she is our project manager. So there
1:58
Speaker 1: is a lot of understanding of what it takes to
2:02
Speaker 1: be different and to shift and to make up for
2:07
Speaker 1: the pressures that are on the pharmacy ecosystem, not just
2:13
Speaker 1: independent community, but I'm talking about long-term care pharmacy and
2:17
Speaker 1: specialty and compounding and every single sector of pharmacy, health
2:21
Speaker 1: system pharmacy has pressures on it. They're very unique pressures.
2:26
Speaker 1: The reason I happen to gravitate towards the entrepreneurial side,
2:31
Speaker 1: and that is the independent community pharmacy is because I
2:35
Speaker 1: am also an independent publication. I'm not a big, huge,
2:39
Speaker 1: multi-million dollar organization and rely on the expertise and the
2:46
Speaker 1: intelligence of our pharmacy communities to give me content that
2:50
Speaker 1: can help our operators do better. And that's why I
2:54
Speaker 1: bring organizations and people on like you, you have grown
2:58
Speaker 1: this Pelmeds entity for over 30 years. It's been Pelmeds
3:03
Speaker 1: since 2024, but it took so many things that you
3:08
Speaker 1: staged in order to get where you are. And I
3:11
Speaker 1: want to give you an opportunity to share with the
3:15
Speaker 1: listeners that about how did Pell Meds become Pell Meds today?
3:20
Speaker 1: And it wasn't that, you know, when you started 30
3:22
Speaker 1: years ago.
3:23
Speaker 3: Thank you, Todd, for the question. My story began when
3:27
Speaker 3: I graduated from pharmacy school. All I wanted to do
3:30
Speaker 3: was move up the chain ladder, be in corporate America, change,
3:34
Speaker 3: which is starting in Massachusetts in the late 80s and
3:39
Speaker 3: early 90s. Well, my wish came true. I was promoted
3:43
Speaker 3: at a very young age. I was one of the
3:45
Speaker 3: youngest district managers in the history of the chain at
3:49
Speaker 3: 24 to run 30 stores for them in the Boston area.
3:53
Speaker 3: Loved the experience, hated middle management, was very frustrated of
3:57
Speaker 3: things that would come down from upper management to have
4:01
Speaker 3: pharmacists do, being a pharmacist, being on the bench. I
4:05
Speaker 3: was not appreciative of those. So I had actually resigned
4:08
Speaker 3: from that position and decided, okay, I'm going to try
4:11
Speaker 3: long-term care, something that I hadn't done. Worked for a
4:15
Speaker 3: large long-term care company, mid-90s, same sort of an experience,
4:20
Speaker 3: loved what I was doing for patients. There was the
4:23
Speaker 3: assisted living marketplace coming up at that time, so I
4:27
Speaker 3: was very excited about that. That same thing was in
4:30
Speaker 3: getting the support from upper management. So in sheer frustration,
4:33
Speaker 3: I said, you know what, I'm going to quit. I'm
4:36
Speaker 3: going to start my own pharmacy, and I'm going to
4:38
Speaker 3: do what you guys do, but just better. So that's
4:40
Speaker 3: how my pharmacy came to play. I had no clue
4:44
Speaker 3: what it would be looking like to become a pharmacist.
4:48
Speaker 3: And ever since, my initial goal was to bring pharmacy
4:52
Speaker 3: to the folks aging in place. I was thinking about
4:57
Speaker 3: the baby boomers. This was, you know, circa late 90s
5:01
Speaker 3: before it really became a thing. But my issue was
5:06
Speaker 3: people were not ready to do aging at home. So
5:10
Speaker 3: I was kind of stuck in between like, okay, I
5:12
Speaker 3: want to do this, but it's not working. And assisted
5:15
Speaker 3: livings were starting. So we jumped into the assisted living
5:18
Speaker 3: field with multi-dose packing in mind. But for me to
5:22
Speaker 3: get there, I fully understood that if I don't synchronize meds,
5:27
Speaker 3: And this is from day one. If all the meds
5:30
Speaker 3: are not put together, it would be really hard for
5:34
Speaker 3: me to develop any sort of a systematic format to
5:38
Speaker 3: deliver medications to the customers. I did not want to
5:41
Speaker 3: go to somebody's house or to an assisted living eight
5:45
Speaker 3: times a month to deliver one person's medications. So since
5:48
Speaker 3: the very beginning, every single customer of ours was on
5:52
Speaker 3: a med synchronization plan. So from there, we started developing
5:57
Speaker 3: other ideas on how to get to the next level.
6:01
Speaker 3: Along the way, we had an acquisition of one of
6:04
Speaker 3: our competitors that was in the same marketplace. We started
6:07
Speaker 3: to grow on the assisted living business. But in the
6:10
Speaker 3: late 2000s, I realized assisted living had become something that
6:19
Speaker 3: it wasn't before. There were more highly intensive care patients
6:23
Speaker 3: that were being transferred from nursing homes because nursing homes
6:25
Speaker 3: were closing. I was able to keep my eyes on
6:29
Speaker 3: what else was going on beyond just my pharmacy to
6:32
Speaker 3: understand where healthcare was going in general. At that point,
6:37
Speaker 3: I realized we were not able to collect the monies
6:39
Speaker 3: that we were putting out from MedPart D plans that
6:42
Speaker 3: were also in place since 2007 or somewhere around there.
6:45
Speaker 3: They don't know how gaps that were causing us to
6:49
Speaker 3: chase people for monies. And it just became a lot
6:52
Speaker 3: to take care of these patients with medication management. So
6:55
Speaker 3: I pivoted ourselves from assisted livings to go into the developmental,
7:01
Speaker 3: intellectual and developmental disabilities field with group homes where the
7:05
Speaker 3: population was more stable and they were dual eligibles. So
7:10
Speaker 3: we've continued to grow that segment. And now we're one
7:12
Speaker 3: of the leaders in Massachusetts in in the intellectual and
7:16
Speaker 3: physical disability space.
7:19
Speaker 1: So that's the point that I made in our introduction
7:24
Speaker 1: is you've chosen a specific population that is vastly overlooked
7:31
Speaker 1: in many cases where there isn't specialty care, there isn't
7:34
Speaker 1: specialty understanding of what these patients are experiencing and going through.
7:40
Speaker 1: And if I have eight vials or eight containers that myself,
7:46
Speaker 1: you know, I have to pick one, one out of
7:49
Speaker 1: this vial, two out of this vial, one out of
7:51
Speaker 1: this vial, and there's going to be mistakes. There's going
7:55
Speaker 1: to be an opportunity to not take my meds, fall
7:58
Speaker 1: off at adherence. And now, of course, you know better
8:02
Speaker 1: than anyone and you and the physician and the primary
8:05
Speaker 1: care team that that can cascade and that can domino
8:08
Speaker 1: into falling back off of treatment. And now, of course,
8:12
Speaker 1: someone might end up in a psychiatric ward, or they
8:16
Speaker 1: might end up in the emergency room. So in doing this,
8:20
Speaker 1: you're doing multiple things. You're creating care plans that keep
8:26
Speaker 1: people adherent. You're ensuring from a public health and safety
8:30
Speaker 1: perspective that people are being cared for. And you're keeping
8:34
Speaker 1: costs down from not having people return to the emergency room.
8:38
Speaker 1: Our politicians, more politicians, need to understand what our advanced...
8:44
Speaker 1: independent community pharmacies are doing. And Palmeds, you've done this
8:49
Speaker 1: from the beginning, but you finally marketed it as something
8:52
Speaker 1: that is really increasing in scope. And now the popular term, Buren,
8:58
Speaker 1: is long-term care pharmacy at home. And you probably rolled
9:02
Speaker 1: your eyes when you first heard that term because you're like, wow,
9:05
Speaker 1: I've been doing that for the last 15 years.
9:09
Speaker 3: Yes, 100% on point, right? And just to, Todd, to
9:12
Speaker 3: go back to what you said, right? I'll give you
9:14
Speaker 3: a quick example, right? When somebody comes out of the
9:17
Speaker 3: hospital and you go to a retail big box store,
9:20
Speaker 3: they fill the prescription that you've handed them or your
9:23
Speaker 3: caretaker has handed them, right? They're not doing a pre
9:26
Speaker 3: and post hospitalization med regimen review of what you were
9:30
Speaker 3: on before. We at Pell Meds do that consistently. Half
9:35
Speaker 3: the times your PCP or your specialty doc does not
9:38
Speaker 3: even know you might have been hospitalized. And med changes
9:42
Speaker 3: happen in hospitals all the time because medication may have
9:45
Speaker 3: been on formulary. You have residents that are trained to
9:48
Speaker 3: just pick specific brands over the others. They might not
9:51
Speaker 3: have agreed with you or your community-based doctor might have
9:56
Speaker 3: not agreed with that specific medication. So when you come
9:59
Speaker 3: out of the hospital, this actually happened where a doctor
10:03
Speaker 3: asked the patient what strength of Depakote they were on
10:06
Speaker 3: and the person said 1500, not even verifying that. So
10:11
Speaker 3: when the person came out with the prescription for 1500 milligrams,
10:15
Speaker 3: the person had never been on that. When we call
10:18
Speaker 3: the doc at the hospital, they're like, oh, well, this
10:20
Speaker 3: is what the patient said. The patient had only been
10:23
Speaker 3: on half that dose. So these are examples that happen
10:26
Speaker 3: all the time. And unless you take the opportunity to
10:31
Speaker 3: intervene and say, okay, you were on these meds, these
10:34
Speaker 3: aligning with what your previous treatment and therapies were, it
10:38
Speaker 3: does not work. And it just makes it all sorts
10:41
Speaker 3: of studies before med synchronization became a thing with Obamacare,
10:47
Speaker 3: we were doing it. We knew far before that that
10:51
Speaker 3: synchronizing medications made it easy for the staff at the
10:55
Speaker 3: facilities to get meds all at one time. Or if
10:58
Speaker 3: somebody was in the home and they had a caretaker,
11:01
Speaker 3: that they wouldn't have to make eight trips to the pharmacy.
11:04
Speaker 3: You end up at the pharmacy, oh, oops, this one
11:06
Speaker 3: doesn't have a refill. Now you have to wait. And
11:09
Speaker 3: what is the individual doing in the meantime without medications?
11:12
Speaker 3: So all sorts of things made sense to make sure
11:15
Speaker 3: you're synchronizing the medications for the individuals you serve.
11:20
Speaker 1: You're in the desire to deliver medications in the way
11:26
Speaker 1: that you're doing it. You have care behind that. You
11:30
Speaker 1: have a personal relationship with your clients and those entities
11:35
Speaker 1: that are caring for those clients, especially like in your
11:38
Speaker 1: assisted living facilities that you know personally. But if you
11:43
Speaker 1: don't have the technology to back you up and if
11:46
Speaker 1: you don't have the technology.
11:47
Speaker 2: For the creativity.
11:49
Speaker 1: of how you want to deliver those services, it really
11:52
Speaker 1: becomes strenuous on your operations, especially if that's outdated technology.
11:58
Speaker 1: SuiteRx is your platform, and you're able to do so
12:04
Speaker 1: much with that. I want you to share with the
12:05
Speaker 1: listeners how the SuiteRx system makes a difference in the
12:10
Speaker 1: infrastructure of your operations.
12:12
Speaker 3: Oh, great question. So I've been using SweetRx since 2008.
12:18
Speaker 3: My journey with them began because we were using an
12:23
Speaker 3: antiquated platform called Rescot. It was the go-to built by,
12:28
Speaker 3: I think, Omnicare for long-term care facilities. It was such
12:34
Speaker 3: a stringent... Again, we're not going to talk about that.
12:36
Speaker 2: It was.
12:38
Speaker 3: Pharmacy softwares at that time, I'm going back now almost
12:41
Speaker 3: 20 years ago, were not very open to the ideas
12:46
Speaker 3: of having something custom created for the individual pharmacy. That's
12:51
Speaker 3: actually what attracted me to SweetRx because when I interviewed
12:55
Speaker 3: with them about what they can do for us, I said, oh,
12:58
Speaker 3: can you create a custom product? MAR for me if
13:01
Speaker 3: a facility wants A versus B. They're like, yeah, we
13:05
Speaker 3: can do that. Can you do something else? Yes, we
13:07
Speaker 3: can do that. So that's what attracted me to them.
13:10
Speaker 3: They were also small enough, not a big giant at
13:13
Speaker 3: that time, to work with you one-on-one. And along the way,
13:19
Speaker 3: as we have grown, as our needs have changed, they
13:22
Speaker 3: have been doing the same thing. They have been responding
13:25
Speaker 3: to the needs of the customers. They have been producing products.
13:28
Speaker 3: product that would work. And as I started to develop
13:31
Speaker 3: my own software and technology, I found them to be
13:34
Speaker 3: a really valuable partner that I've been able to interface
13:38
Speaker 3: my pharmacy software that I have with SRX to be
13:43
Speaker 3: able to get the best of what I need to
13:44
Speaker 3: serve my customers. So it's been an awesome relationship with them.
13:50
Speaker 1: What's nice about the systems that they provide is it's
13:54
Speaker 1: not 100% defined. It's allowing the operator the creativity and
14:01
Speaker 1: the workflow that you want to design because of some
14:05
Speaker 1: of the proprietary systems and processes that you have in
14:09
Speaker 1: place to serve your assisted living centers, these institutions, these
14:15
Speaker 1: organizations that may have something that's not out of the box.
14:19
Speaker 1: And so the APIs and the Connections between SRX, SweetRX systems,
14:25
Speaker 1: your systems, and then of course the communications with those facilities,
14:29
Speaker 1: that is key in keeping those facilities to do business
14:32
Speaker 1: with you. And when a new RFP comes to those
14:36
Speaker 1: assisted living facilities, and it's a big organization that is
14:40
Speaker 1: like a dinosaur really in some of the systems they have,
14:45
Speaker 1: They say, no, we don't want this because PalMeds is
14:49
Speaker 1: doing things very custom for us. That is a huge
14:53
Speaker 1: competitive differentiator.
14:54
Speaker 2: Right.
14:55
Speaker 3: No, absolutely. And Todd, can I quickly just talk about
14:58
Speaker 3: how we got to my technology piece? Yes, yes. So
15:01
Speaker 3: what happened was around 2016, my pharmacy was on two specific,
15:05
Speaker 3: on two floors. Upstairs was the customer service data entry
15:11
Speaker 3: intake coordinators, that sort of stuff. Downstairs, we had the
15:14
Speaker 3: fulfillment side. And a lot of times, you know, we're
15:17
Speaker 3: in the pharmacy business, things change at any given time.
15:21
Speaker 3: So what would happen is somebody would take a phone call, hey,
15:25
Speaker 3: Sam Jones needs this medication ASAP tonight. There was really
15:29
Speaker 3: no other means of communication except walking downstairs and giving
15:33
Speaker 3: the note to the PV2 pharmacist and saying, hey, take
15:35
Speaker 3: care of this. We were noticing several communication gaps within
15:40
Speaker 3: our organization, Sometimes the left hand didn't know what the
15:44
Speaker 3: right hand was doing or wouldn't know on time. So
15:47
Speaker 3: I went out searching the marketplace for some sort of
15:49
Speaker 3: a communication board, if you will, to facilitate transfer of
15:56
Speaker 3: information about a specific patient between all those involved in
16:00
Speaker 3: the pharmacy to get the product out correctly. I couldn't
16:04
Speaker 3: find anything in the marketplace, so I started something called Peltask.
16:08
Speaker 3: We actually went out, got my own development team and
16:13
Speaker 3: started to create this board. Once we created it, everybody
16:17
Speaker 3: had access to it on their own desktop. We got
16:21
Speaker 3: rid of paper, the old whiteboard you used to see
16:23
Speaker 3: where you write down information. We got rid of it.
16:28
Speaker 3: Within three months of implementing this, we noticed a 70%
16:33
Speaker 3: decrease in communication gaps that my staff was having. When
16:37
Speaker 3: I realized that this was such a powerful tool to
16:40
Speaker 3: communicate between the pharmacy staff, we created the same sort
16:45
Speaker 3: of platform for our customers. And I'm going back eight
16:51
Speaker 3: years now, where it really opened up a portal for
16:55
Speaker 3: the customer to interact with the pharmacy without having to
17:01
Speaker 3: pick up the phone. Especially post-COVID, the number of healthcare
17:05
Speaker 3: facilities and otherwise that have shortages in staff, this really
17:09
Speaker 3: eased the amount of work that the customer had to do.
17:13
Speaker 3: You don't have to pick up the phone. You don't
17:15
Speaker 3: have to call and wait on the phone. You speak
17:18
Speaker 3: to somebody and then it becomes a he said, she
17:21
Speaker 3: said situation. our platform was able to completely eliminate that. Today,
17:26
Speaker 3: we're getting a ton of mobile order. We call them
17:30
Speaker 3: mobile orders that our customers use through our Peltask portal.
17:35
Speaker 3: And what that does is we've equated it to, it's
17:38
Speaker 3: almost saving, as of today, and only about 60% of
17:41
Speaker 3: our customers are using it. Some of them are still
17:44
Speaker 3: not on top of technology advancements, but we're saving approximately
17:49
Speaker 3: 18 to 24,000 minutes of talk time. for the customer,
17:54
Speaker 3: and more importantly, for the pharmacy staff as well. I
17:59
Speaker 3: can't even imagine us not having this technology with the
18:03
Speaker 3: number of minutes to fulfill on both sides.
18:07
Speaker 1: But you and I, before we started recording, we were
18:10
Speaker 1: talking about another organization, another pharmacy care provider, good people
18:16
Speaker 1: care about their community. And this is not just them.
18:20
Speaker 1: And we're not going to talk about who they are,
18:22
Speaker 1: but I want to make an example. There are listeners
18:24
Speaker 1: right now who feel trapped because they're stuck in the
18:29
Speaker 1: status quo. They're stuck in something, and it's only them
18:32
Speaker 1: that's holding themselves back. But you started seeing things a
18:37
Speaker 1: different way, and then you built a system around the
18:41
Speaker 1: issue and around the problem in order to change the
18:44
Speaker 1: systems and change the processes, change the workflow. and what
18:48
Speaker 1: and how you are delivering pharmacy care now is vastly
18:52
Speaker 1: different than what it looked like 10, 20, and of course,
18:56
Speaker 1: 30 years ago. I want you to talk to our
18:58
Speaker 1: listeners about, and tough love for the listeners out there,
19:03
Speaker 1: innovation is no longer a maybe I'll do it. If
19:08
Speaker 1: you want to survive in this game right now, you
19:11
Speaker 1: have got to innovate. So talk to us about innovation
19:14
Speaker 1: and what you decided to do.
19:16
Speaker 3: Yep, absolutely, right? If you go to our website or
19:20
Speaker 3: you see our PalMeds logo right underneath that, it says PalMeds,
19:24
Speaker 3: where innovation meets medication. This has been my mantra since
19:27
Speaker 3: the beginning. We have been able to evolve as we
19:31
Speaker 3: have gone through our history of PalMeds. A quick example
19:36
Speaker 3: was we were the largest user of medicine on time,
19:39
Speaker 3: if people remember that system, which is still in play now.
19:43
Speaker 3: Before machines came out to do the automation, we were
19:47
Speaker 3: the largest user of medicine on time consumables in the
19:51
Speaker 3: country in 2007. It's just a very manual process. I
19:57
Speaker 3: had 10 to 15 technicians just hand-filling medications at that time.
20:03
Speaker 3: I was the first pharmacy in the state on the
20:05
Speaker 3: retail LT close shop site, to take this medicine on
20:09
Speaker 3: time and converted it to the TCGRX strip packing. The
20:14
Speaker 3: reason being is I wanted to use technology for accuracy,
20:17
Speaker 3: for speed, efficiency, to be able to get the product
20:20
Speaker 3: out on a timely basis. And also alongside, I would
20:25
Speaker 3: meet with the customers, you would get on the phone,
20:27
Speaker 3: they would tell you what's not working for them, what's
20:30
Speaker 3: working for them. How can you not take advantage of
20:35
Speaker 3: the information customers are giving you? They're giving it to
20:38
Speaker 3: you for free. Why would you not do it? I've
20:41
Speaker 3: always been that person to listen to the customer's pain points,
20:46
Speaker 3: listen to what the customer needs, and then evolve myself
20:50
Speaker 3: as a pharmacy to be able to meet those needs.
20:53
Speaker 3: That was the biggest driving force for my innovation. The
20:57
Speaker 3: other piece is you look inwards to your pharmacy operations
21:00
Speaker 3: on a daily basis. How can we do this differently?
21:03
Speaker 3: Why am I going to continue to do the same old,
21:06
Speaker 3: same old when the pharmacy world is not the same old,
21:09
Speaker 3: same old that it was when I started? So that's
21:12
Speaker 3: really driven it. And then what it turned out to
21:15
Speaker 3: be was beyond what I had expected. I was filling
21:19
Speaker 3: my needs and the needs of our customers. But in
21:22
Speaker 3: the process, we realized that we have a lot more
21:26
Speaker 3: to offer when it comes to pitching to somebody like
21:29
Speaker 3: you had mentioned, right? Everybody can dispense the same furosemide
21:33
Speaker 3: or lisinopril in a blister cart. Yeah, we all do
21:35
Speaker 3: blister carts. What sets me apart now is my technology,
21:39
Speaker 3: the ability that a customer can communicate with my pharmacy
21:43
Speaker 3: staff with such ease. We have systems in place of
21:47
Speaker 3: transfer of information that they need and require in today's
21:50
Speaker 3: day and age. what they weren't able to get from
21:53
Speaker 3: other providers. So we've been fortunate that our innovation, my
21:58
Speaker 3: ability to not stop and let things come to me instead,
22:02
Speaker 3: go out and try to fix something has really led
22:05
Speaker 3: us to be in a good spot with our customers
22:09
Speaker 3: and in the marketplace with our competitors.
22:12
Speaker 1: Servant leader approach is a, is a, hard pathway because
22:18
Speaker 1: it takes a lot of discipline. It takes consistency. It
22:24
Speaker 1: takes time for you to look yourself in the mirror
22:27
Speaker 1: and press your ego down. But I want to just
22:30
Speaker 1: make a point to the listeners. Helmed's has received award
22:34
Speaker 1: after award after award that's been recognized by your own community.
22:39
Speaker 1: The public is so hard on pharmacists. They're so hard
22:43
Speaker 1: on technicians. We see TikTok and Instagram video after video
22:48
Speaker 1: of people that I care about, friends of mine, that
22:51
Speaker 1: are being abused by the public. They're being pressured by
22:55
Speaker 1: the public. If there's something that needs to be refilled,
22:59
Speaker 1: it's too soon. They have to convey that. Copays change.
23:03
Speaker 1: Insurance changes. The public thinks that it's the pharmacist's fault.
23:06
Speaker 1: They have no idea that it's the PBM behind the scenes.
23:10
Speaker 1: Your community has embraced you and has recognized you. The
23:13
Speaker 1: community services awards that you received from the Needham Public Schools,
23:19
Speaker 1: the Man of the Year Award that you received from
23:21
Speaker 1: Charles River Center. Your team, it's not just Buren, your
23:26
Speaker 1: entire team is working in tandem and nothing's perfect. But
23:31
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what, you have built a train engine
23:34
Speaker 1: system that is pulling so much of the weight of
23:37
Speaker 1: health care and the health care needs. of your communities
23:40
Speaker 1: and three different locations that you have. Talk to us
23:43
Speaker 1: about servant leadership and how you've always positioned yourself to
23:47
Speaker 1: be a servant.
23:49
Speaker 3: So thank you, Todd, for the compliments. Yes. Especially during COVID,
23:54
Speaker 3: we went out. I mean, the whole world changed for
23:58
Speaker 3: all of us, right? And our customers, especially the population
24:03
Speaker 3: we served, their most neediest in terms of health care.
24:07
Speaker 3: They're the most susceptible, especially to viruses like the COVID
24:13
Speaker 3: in that time. I literally sat there 24-7 sourcing PPE
24:21
Speaker 3: for our customers that was not found anywhere. Literally, I
24:25
Speaker 3: was making calls all over the world to get this
24:28
Speaker 3: sort of stuff. At one point, we literally had a
24:30
Speaker 3: container of gloves and masks being delivered so that we
24:34
Speaker 3: could distribute this to our customers. I don't have to
24:37
Speaker 3: do this, right? I mean, we're just doing medications. I
24:42
Speaker 3: was also one of the folks that called up the
24:46
Speaker 3: state Medicaid program and said, listen, you're implementing policies that
24:51
Speaker 3: are completely out of date for COVID. How can we
24:55
Speaker 3: change this to make sure we're able to build ahead to,
25:00
Speaker 3: nobody knew what the supply chain was going to look like, right?
25:03
Speaker 3: We had only our customer in mind, these folks could
25:06
Speaker 3: not go without medications. How can we ensure we get
25:09
Speaker 3: these medications? So I worked with the state Medicaid program
25:13
Speaker 3: to give us the override so we can get these
25:16
Speaker 3: medications and give them a 14-day extra supply so that
25:21
Speaker 3: we had more time to get it from the wholesalers
25:24
Speaker 3: and such. So it was all about the customer that
25:27
Speaker 3: was driving this engine for us, if you will, to
25:31
Speaker 3: use your words. And all along, it's been about the
25:34
Speaker 3: customer recognizing their needs and anticipating their needs, right? Now
25:39
Speaker 3: there's a shortage of staff. How can I work with
25:42
Speaker 3: the customer to ensure all their pain points get taken
25:46
Speaker 3: care of, at least as far as medications are concerned.
25:48
Speaker 3: They can't call the doctor. They don't have enough staff.
25:51
Speaker 3: Doctors are not answering the calls. Who are they going
25:53
Speaker 3: to talk to? And one very valuable of many lessons
25:57
Speaker 3: I've learned throughout my life, when I was in retail
26:00
Speaker 3: as a pharmacy intern, one of my pharmacists said to me,
26:04
Speaker 3: he goes, people only call you when they need you.
26:09
Speaker 3: We know we're in a thankless position. Nobody calls you
26:12
Speaker 3: on the phone to say, hey, how's it going? Just
26:15
Speaker 3: checking in on my neighborhood pharmacist, right? You never heard
26:18
Speaker 3: of that. So I tell my staff, when they call you,
26:22
Speaker 3: they call you because they need something from you that
26:25
Speaker 3: they can't get. So I... I'm so convinced that this
26:29
Speaker 3: is what my staff needs. We don't say no. We
26:32
Speaker 3: will figure out a way to take care of our
26:34
Speaker 3: customer so long as we are in the realms of
26:37
Speaker 3: meeting all the board of pharmacy and the law requirements.
26:40
Speaker 3: We will do everything, turn every stone to try to
26:44
Speaker 3: answer the customer's call.
26:48
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. I want the listeners
26:50
Speaker 1: to also pay attention to the other aspects of these
26:54
Speaker 1: systems in place. that you can take advantage of and
26:57
Speaker 1: you can customize for yourself. I'm talking about portals like
27:01
Speaker 1: the patient refill on the go portal from SRX, SweetRx,
27:06
Speaker 1: called MyRx, as well as the APIs that they've developed
27:10
Speaker 1: to other system enhancing pharmacy workflows. I also want you
27:14
Speaker 1: to take a look at something called SRX Affinity and
27:17
Speaker 1: being able to monitor pharmacy performance in and out of
27:22
Speaker 1: the store, actually, when you're away. And then, of course,
27:24
Speaker 1: we know with the expansion of long-term care pharmacy at home,
27:29
Speaker 1: if you don't have a delivery solution, it's going to
27:31
Speaker 1: be very hard to actually expand those services. So SRX
27:35
Speaker 1: delivery is another component that I want you to kind
27:38
Speaker 1: of look into. And then, last but not least, the
27:41
Speaker 1: precise inventory monitoring made easy through SRX logistics services. This
27:47
Speaker 1: is another way to expand and show off your pharmacy
27:51
Speaker 1: services and technology that are in place. What other services
27:56
Speaker 1: are you interested in using that you may not be
28:00
Speaker 1: using now from SweetRx or that you are using that
28:02
Speaker 1: you find extremely valuable to be part of your business operations?
28:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, you know, we've taken advantage of some of
28:09
Speaker 3: the offerings that SRX has. Some of them we have
28:12
Speaker 3: developed online. in silo compared to what SRX has, only
28:17
Speaker 3: because we were looking to fulfill a specific need, whereas
28:21
Speaker 3: some of those tools that might not have been catered
28:23
Speaker 3: with us with SRX. But for example, the delivery portal,
28:28
Speaker 3: we have worked with them to use. There's also, we
28:31
Speaker 3: haven't used their, we do use their inventory platform, but
28:35
Speaker 3: to the extent that we work with some of the
28:38
Speaker 3: generic wholesalers and stuff or short cost to make that work.
28:42
Speaker 3: So we have as whenever we can, we try to
28:45
Speaker 3: leverage SRX doing the heavy lifting with understanding the customer's needs.
28:51
Speaker 3: And then if it works for us, then we're able
28:53
Speaker 3: to incorporate it into our workflow and operations. Also with
28:57
Speaker 3: the billing portals that they have, the refill requests for
29:02
Speaker 3: our LTC side of things have been really useful for
29:05
Speaker 3: us to use that we wouldn't have gotten elsewhere. Especially,
29:09
Speaker 3: you know, independent, not just independent pharmacy. Reimbursement's a big
29:13
Speaker 3: problem for all of us, right? Oh, yes. As independent
29:16
Speaker 3: pharmacy owners, how do you manage the cost of software?
29:22
Speaker 3: When we had an acquisition two years ago, they were
29:24
Speaker 3: using a different platform. It was two times the cost
29:28
Speaker 3: of what I'm paying for SRX. I mean, you have
29:30
Speaker 3: to evaluate, right? Is it worth the extra spend? And then,
29:34
Speaker 3: quite frankly, they had a far inferior product than I
29:36
Speaker 3: was getting from SRX. I made it my top priority.
29:39
Speaker 3: within four months of acquiring that specific location, we switched
29:45
Speaker 3: to SRX. And the great thing about them was I
29:49
Speaker 3: needed that switch to happen on January 1st of that
29:53
Speaker 3: following year. had a conversation with the team. You're out
29:57
Speaker 3: of your mind. Who's going to work the holiday? And
30:00
Speaker 3: I'm talking about, they're telling me, the SRX is telling me,
30:03
Speaker 3: who's going to work on January 1st or before to
30:06
Speaker 3: prep this? Like, I got this. And they were awesome.
30:10
Speaker 3: They sent somebody and we switched on as of the first,
30:14
Speaker 3: like we had wanted to. And these are things that
30:18
Speaker 3: they're able to offer that others might not be as
30:21
Speaker 3: open to doing for independents.
30:24
Speaker 1: Very customer-oriented. I've heard stories before. I actually worked with
30:28
Speaker 1: this team in a personal basis for about two to
30:31
Speaker 1: three years, and I saw it. I saw the team
30:35
Speaker 1: go over, bend over backwards for their clients just to
30:38
Speaker 1: ensure that they're winning business and that they're keeping their
30:41
Speaker 1: clients happy and that they're keeping your community engaged with you.
30:45
Speaker 1: I want to let the listeners know, look up Pell Meds.
30:50
Speaker 1: Go to pellmeds.com. Once again, that's pellmeds.com. I want you
30:56
Speaker 1: to read up on what Buren has done as a
30:59
Speaker 1: pharmacy owner. Reach out to Buren through the contact sheet.
31:04
Speaker 1: Ask him questions if you are wondering about the SweetRx
31:08
Speaker 1: system or other things that he's doing to really stand
31:10
Speaker 1: out in his community in the state of Massachusetts as
31:13
Speaker 1: a pharmacy owner, as an entrepreneur, as somebody who has staff,
31:17
Speaker 1: who has family, who has to care for so many
31:20
Speaker 1: different people in his life, but most importantly, his patients.
31:25
Speaker 1: And then once again, I want to just give a
31:28
Speaker 1: shout out to the SweetRx team, empowering pharmacy innovation. Go
31:33
Speaker 1: to SweetRx.com to learn more. If you are dissatisfied with
31:38
Speaker 1: any aspect of your pharmacy management system software, reach out
31:43
Speaker 1: to the SweetRx team, ask questions, especially in the capacity
31:47
Speaker 1: of growing your long-term care business and the hot topic
31:52
Speaker 1: now we are in is called long-term care pharmacy at
31:56
Speaker 1: home and being able to service people that are having
31:59
Speaker 1: a hard time getting out of their home. And that
32:01
Speaker 1: also might be an assisted living facility. It might not
32:05
Speaker 1: be just someone's home. So there's kind of a multi-play
32:09
Speaker 1: here about the business opportunity and the growth expansion, but
32:14
Speaker 1: without the right technology, it's going to be very hard
32:16
Speaker 1: to do that. But yeah, we're so excited about this interview.
32:21
Speaker 1: I want to give our listeners also a shout out.
32:23
Speaker 1: Thank you for what you do for your communities. You're
32:27
Speaker 1: not in this alone. If you ever have questions, you
32:30
Speaker 1: might not necessarily want to talk to a vendor, reach
32:32
Speaker 1: out to me. I'm an old pharmacy software sales guy.
32:36
Speaker 1: I sold pharmacy software for nearly eight years. And I
32:40
Speaker 1: understand some of the basics and who are the players
32:44
Speaker 1: and what their reputations are. But Buren, in wrapping up today,
32:48
Speaker 1: what do you tell the pharmacy owner that's listening in
32:50
Speaker 1: right now that once again is on the fence of
32:55
Speaker 1: making changes in order to have a thriving business?
33:00
Speaker 3: So great question, Todd. Again, some of the points you've
33:04
Speaker 3: already hit on, but you know what? I've learned through
33:07
Speaker 3: the years and I have seen, oh, I can't believe
33:10
Speaker 3: I'm even putting myself in that category. I've now been
33:13
Speaker 3: doing this for 27 years as an independent pharmacy owner, right?
33:17
Speaker 3: We all have our ups and downs. We're not the
33:19
Speaker 3: only folks that have our ups and downs. Big corporations, personally,
33:23
Speaker 3: everybody does, right? It's about showing up to work, having
33:27
Speaker 3: that passion every single day. I'm so passionate. I love
33:31
Speaker 3: what I do, even on the crappiest days or the
33:34
Speaker 3: best of days. I come in, I work with my
33:38
Speaker 3: great team that I've been fortunate to have and build around,
33:42
Speaker 3: and the customers. Without the customers, nothing happens. It's become
33:46
Speaker 3: such a two-way street. When we falter, which we do
33:50
Speaker 3: as humans, as pharmacists, we make mistakes. How do you
33:53
Speaker 3: pick yourself up and learn from those mistakes, whether it's
33:56
Speaker 3: the wrong medication given, wrong delivery, whatever the case might be, right?
34:01
Speaker 3: And show up consistently, make the change. What are you
34:05
Speaker 3: afraid of? What's the worst that can happen? It doesn't work.
34:09
Speaker 3: I've made several mistakes. It doesn't work. It doesn't work, right?
34:12
Speaker 3: And sometimes as independent pharmacy owners, I have learned this.
34:16
Speaker 3: You have to make the hard decisions yourself. You can
34:20
Speaker 3: rely on your team members to assist you when you
34:22
Speaker 3: have a question. Hey, what do you think of this?
34:25
Speaker 3: And I've learned that first reaction to a suggestion of
34:27
Speaker 3: an idea or a change, they shake their head even
34:30
Speaker 3: before you've completed the sentence, no, it won't work. Well,
34:34
Speaker 3: you have to drive that change because nobody else in
34:38
Speaker 3: your organization will do that except for you. And I
34:42
Speaker 3: can't stress how important it is, how fearful it is,
34:45
Speaker 3: but you've got to do that to stay on top
34:48
Speaker 3: of your game.
34:50
Speaker 1: Biran Patel with Helmeds, thank you so much for sharing
34:54
Speaker 1: and for being part of the Sweetcast. We so much
34:57
Speaker 1: appreciate your insights and we can't wait to talk to
35:01
Speaker 1: you again some other time.
35:02
Speaker 3: Thank you. Todd, thank you again. I appreciate it. Have
35:04
Speaker 3: a great day.