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Medication Dispensing
Why Dispense?
One of the best ways to bring value to your DPC membership is to dispense prescription medications out of your office. It saves patients time, energy, and (most of the time) money to get their prescriptions from your office.
Physicians can currently dispense prescriptions out of their offices in 45 states. The rules and regulations for dispensing varies drastically by state. DPC Frontier which is managed by Phil Eskew DO, JD, MBA has an extensive listing of each and every state that he keeps track of. (https://www.dpcfrontier.com/dispensing-medications). The five states that currently dont allow physician dispensing are NH, MA, NJ, TX, NY (even in these states there are some “emergency” situations where short term prescriptions can be dispensed.
For the rest of the states, after you have complied with your state regulations, you should strongly consider providing this service. It is extremely valuable for a sick/acute patient to be able to get what they need at the visit rather than going to the pharmacy to wait for an hour or more while in pain or ill.
Similarly, dispensing chronic medications is valuable for patients. Many DPC offices will buy drugs in bulk just like a pharmacy and sell them at very little or no profit. Patients will often save enough money on several prescriptions to pay for most or all of the DPC membership fee. (example: lisinopril is currently 5 cents/pill. 100 of them would only be $5). This provides VALUE to your membership. Many of your patients would rather spend their money with YOU to support your small business and you. Dispensing medications allows you to keep better track of compliance as well.
Also if you get your system streamlined, you provide ease of ordering and picking up medications. Patients will communicate by text, call, email or any of the above to request refills. Most offices will fill non urgent meds within 1-2 days. Usually their software or EMR tracks the meds and billing allowing patients to just put the meds on their account. This makes it easy to just come in and pick them up without long lines and wait times at a pharmacy. Some offices will buy or add some sort of “lockbox” on the outside of their building for after-hours pickup when necessary.
How to Dispense
There are multiple online distributors that will sell meds (and bottles) in bulk and deliver them to your office. Andameds, Bonita, Henry Schein to name a few. With most of these suppliers, you can create an account and pay weekly or monthly for the supplies you buy.
Something to consider is what pill counts to order. If you buy in bottles of 1000s then you or your staff must plan a way to count out the right amount of pills. You may need to buy a pill counter (https://rxcount.com/rx-4/. They run about $2500). Another option is to buy in 90 or 100 count bottles. Then you dont have to count. You do need to be aware of your state law on the type of container needed to dispense. Most have to be child proof.
Prescriptions also need to be labeled. You’ll need a label printer. (Dymo and Brother are a couple of the label printer companies to consider). Connecting the printers to your computers requires a little bit of tech know-how. Most of the inventory tracking and managing will populate the labels with the information. The majority of EMRs that are used in the DPC community do the inventory and billing directly, but there are other software programs that cover this as well if needed.
A few docs also team up or hire a local pharmacy or pharmacist to manage the dispensing. The main concern about this is making sure that they provide good value to the patients. Otherwise it would be the same as any other pharmacy they already have access to.
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Medication Dispensing
Why Dispense?
One of the best ways to bring value to your DPC membership is to dispense prescription medications out of your office. It saves patients time, energy, and (most of the time) money to get their prescriptions from your office.
Physicians can currently dispense prescriptions out of their offices in 45 states. The rules and regulations for dispensing varies drastically by state. DPC Frontier which is managed by Phil Eskew DO, JD, MBA has an extensive listing of each and every state that he keeps track of. (https://www.dpcfrontier.com/dispensing-medications). The five states that currently dont allow physician dispensing are NH, MA, NJ, TX, NY (even in these states there are some “emergency” situations where short term prescriptions can be dispensed.
For the rest of the states, after you have complied with your state regulations, you should strongly consider providing this service. It is extremely valuable for a sick/acute patient to be able to get what they need at the visit rather than going to the pharmacy to wait for an hour or more while in pain or ill.
Similarly, dispensing chronic medications is valuable for patients. Many DPC offices will buy drugs in bulk just like a pharmacy and sell them at very little or no profit. Patients will often save enough money on several prescriptions to pay for most or all of the DPC membership fee. (example: lisinopril is currently 5 cents/pill. 100 of them would only be $5). This provides VALUE to your membership. Many of your patients would rather spend their money with YOU to support your small business and you. Dispensing medications allows you to keep better track of compliance as well.
Also if you get your system streamlined, you provide ease of ordering and picking up medications. Patients will communicate by text, call, email or any of the above to request refills. Most offices will fill non urgent meds within 1-2 days. Usually their software or EMR tracks the meds and billing allowing patients to just put the meds on their account. This makes it easy to just come in and pick them up without long lines and wait times at a pharmacy. Some offices will buy or add some sort of “lockbox” on the outside of their building for after-hours pickup when necessary.
How to Dispense
There are multiple online distributors that will sell meds (and bottles) in bulk and deliver them to your office. Andameds, Bonita, Henry Schein to name a few. With most of these suppliers, you can create an account and pay weekly or monthly for the supplies you buy.
Something to consider is what pill counts to order. If you buy in bottles of 1000s then you or your staff must plan a way to count out the right amount of pills. You may need to buy a pill counter (https://rxcount.com/rx-4/. They run about $2500). Another option is to buy in 90 or 100 count bottles. Then you dont have to count. You do need to be aware of your state law on the type of container needed to dispense. Most have to be child proof.
Prescriptions also need to be labeled. You’ll need a label printer. (Dymo and Brother are a couple of the label printer companies to consider). Connecting the printers to your computers requires a little bit of tech know-how. Most of the inventory tracking and managing will populate the labels with the information. The majority of EMRs that are used in the DPC community do the inventory and billing directly, but there are other software programs that cover this as well if needed.
A few docs also team up or hire a local pharmacy or pharmacist to manage the dispensing. The main concern about this is making sure that they provide good value to the patients. Otherwise it would be the same as any other pharmacy they already have access to.