7 Challenges Facing Hospitals and Their Outpatient Pharmacies

High Pharmacy Benefits Manager (PBM) Costs

When an employee at a self-insured hospital uses an outside pharmacy, the hospital can expect to pay their PBM anywhere from $25 to upwards of $100 per prescription. Keeping employee prescriptions in-house saves your organization money.

Low Reimbursement Rates and High Employee Benefits Costs

On average, pharmacy benefit costs represent more than 15% of employers’ health care costs. Hospitals are faced with increasing challenges as their bottom lines continue to be squeezed by lower medical reimbursements, healthcare reform, and double-digit prescription rate increases.

Patient Dissatisfaction

Most hospitals are incentivizing or even mandating employees keep their prescriptions in-house, but struggle to keep employees happy, particularly 2nd and 3rd shifts. Prescription pickup solutions like ScriptCenter enable the most flexible solutions for employees and discharge patients to pick up their prescriptions at their convenience regardless of pharmacy hours.

High Delivery Service and Mail Order Costs

Many hospitals have turned to delivery services and mail order to get prescriptions into the hands of their employees and patients. Associated costs and PBM limitations for using these prescription access methods can have a significant impact on revenue. One hospital transitioned to using ScriptCenter to avoid the $100 PBM charge to fill their mail order prescriptions.

Significant Costs Associated with Opening New Pharmacy Locations

Building new or modifying existing pharmacies to address increasing pharmacy volume is cost-prohibitive and disruptive to operations. Our ScriptCenter partners use our systems to increase adherence and provide extended pharmacy hours by leveraging their main or central fill pharmacies to fill prescriptions and strategically place ScriptCenters near employee and patient exists, clinics, and inside their corporate offices.

Limited Resources to Run an Effective Meds to Beds Program

ScriptCenter provides an alternative pickup location to free up pharmacy staff to focus on your meds to beds program. By placing ScriptCenter in a central location, you will maximize staff efficiency by reducing travel times between pharmacy and patient beside.

Increasing Readmissions Rates and Penalities

30% of discharge prescriptions are never picked up. ScriptCenter provides convenient access to prescriptions and is proven to reduce RTS, increase adherence, and improve patient outcomes.