RxPlus Phar macies , Inc .

Have a Plan for New Customers – Don’t Miss Out On a Golden Opportunity

Bruce Kneeland Pharmacy Industry Consultant

BruceKneeland@KneelandServices.com

My wife and I recently moved from Cedaredge to Lakewood, CO. This means we have to find a new hair dresser, cleaners, auto repair shop, doctors, pharmacy, etc. As we tackle this task I am amazed at how ill prepared these service businesses are at greeting new customers. At the cleaners the attendant was completely befuddled when I asked her about their hours of operation and how much they charged for various services.

Several years ago my wife and I stumbled upon a cute diner about 25 miles from our home. We decided to give it a try and we are glad we did. The food was good, the prices fair and the atmosphere great. But, the real point here is they also had a wonderful program for first time customers. When the server came to our table she could tell we were not familiar with the menu so she asked if this was our first visit. When we said yes she smiled and told us we’re going to love it. Then she pointed out a few things about the menu and made specific mention of their unique business offerings which included soda flavors. For example, they do not sell Coke or Pepsi products but specialize in making their own sodas with a wide variety of flavors. They even offer free baby food for those bringing in an infant. When she returned to take our order she had a business size envelope. It contained a smaller version of the menu, a flyer on the

Featured Article

January - March 2015

RxPlus Mission

RxPlus Pharmacies, Inc.

is an organization of

health care providers

which creates value by

promoting the economic,

professional, educa-

tional, and political ad-

vancement of community

pharmacy. We do this for

the health and well being

of our communities.

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I N S I D E T H I S I S S U E :

Featured Article 1

President’s Message

2

.

Executive Director 2

RxPlus Political Issues 3

C O M M U N I T Y P H A R M A C Y F O R T H E F U T U R E

history of the diner, a refrigerator magnet and a coupon for $5 off any of their souvenir items; t-shirts, baby bibs, baseball caps, etc. What about you – do you have a formal, care-fully thought through and effectively imple-mented program for impressing new pa-tients? If not, here are a few suggestions: 1. Have a simple welcome gift on hand - something meaningful you can give to a new patient. 2. Prepare a packet of information on your pharmacy. 3. Introduce yourself to new patients and thank them for coming in. 4. Have a letter you can mail the new cus-tomer a day or two after they visited your phar-macy.

A program like this won’t cost much and it will help you turn a first time customer into a life-long patient. If you have a formal process for retaining new customers and are willing to share what it is and how it has worked with other RxPlus mem-bers please let us know!

President’s Message

President’s Message

I hope all of you had a healthy and joyous holiday season. I would like to wish everyone a happy and prosperous New Year. One of the new benefits the RxPlus team is doing this year is to send out end of year rebates back to the stores on a quarterly basis. The first quarter checks for fiscal year 2014/2015 went out January 8th. This will allow stores more flexibility in their revenue sharing. This past year has flown by and RxPlus is continuing to look for ways to make stores more profitable and success-ful. Our affiliations with AAP and IPC, has made us stronger and we will continue to grow. Our strategic planning meeting is in February. If you have any ideas, please share them with us. You may contact any Board member or call the office. We are going to put a plan together to place RxPlus in a good position for the future of community pharma-cies. We will continue our calls to all the stores to stay in touch with all of you. Together we are looking forward to a great year! Bill Masse President

Executive Director’s Message

Happy New Year! I hope everyone enjoyed the Holidays. As reimbursements go down we continually look for new

ways to help our pharmacies be more profitable. With this in mind, RxPlus Pharmacies was able to purchase 100 of

the NCPA “Your Daily Pharmacy Planning Guide”. If you would like a planning guide please call the office and we

will send it out to you. NCPA designed this guide to help you stay organized, plan ahead, and better market your prod-

ucts and services throughout the year. It is packed full of ideas from end-cap ideas, sign ideas, online marketing as well

as inventory recommendations. The guide lets you know in advance what national events are occurring that you can

leverage to drive sales. The guide also serves as a reminder to change your telephone messages to keep your patients

and doctors updated on store hours.

This is also a perfect tool to help your employees know what they should be doing on a daily basis. Have an employee

meeting and go over the guide. Set goals and responsibilities for the year. Have your employees make notes of what

has worked and what they could have done differently on a monthly basis.

We hope this guide makes your pharmacies more efficient and profitable.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. Theodore Roosevelt

Grant Kinn

Executive Director

Governmental Affairs Newsletter Update January 2015

By Brad Young The New Year unfortunately started with big increases in the price of some drugs from the

manufacturers with the PBMs and Medicaid NOT making necessary adjustments. We have

had quite a few complaints from members.

Colorado Medicaid:

Medicaid has a process that allows pharmacists to submit an invoice and a price inquiry,

following which there is a review by the Medicaid contractor, Mercer. Mercer this year has

made a few adjustment based on those price inquiries. We have helped a lot of members

send in the inquiries to Mercer. Please feel free to contact us to help you send in your price

inquiries. Staff members at Medicaid have said the prices should be updated soon. We are

going to go to the Medical Services board and possibly the Legislature to try to get a fix for

the problem with Medicaid.

PBMs:

We are in discussions with NCPA about the PBM MAC issue. We will also advise the Leg-

islature that a bill was passed last year to try to keep this problem from happening, and they

might consider weighing in to help us.

Colorado Legislation:

RxPlus has been working on two bills for the 2015 Colorado Legislative Session that began

on January 7, 2015. The main two bills we plan to introduce are:

1. Patient Choice of Pharmacy For Specialty Drugs and Biologicals sponsored by

Senator Larry Crowder (R-Alamosa) and Representative Dianne Primavera (D-

Broomfield). The bill has a procedure to allow patients to choose a local pharmacy

for specialty and biologicals, and restricts PBM from using financial incentives to

encourage patients to use mail order.

2. PBM Audit Requirements tentatively sponsored by Dave Young (D-Greeley) (No

Senate Sponsor identified yet). We have found some updates that need to be made

to the legislation that was passed in 2013. The updates are:

(a) May not conduct an on-site audit of more than 250 unique prescriptions of a

pharmacy in any 12-month period except in cases of alleged fraud;

(b) May not conduct more than one on-site audit of a pharmacy in any 12-month

period;

(c) May not conduct an on-site audit during the first five days of any month without

the pharmacy’s consent;

(d) Not subject a pharmacy to recoupment of funds if the amount dispensed is

greater than the amount required by the prescription and a lesser amount can-

not be dispensed because of packaging from the supplier or manufacturer.

(e) Not subject a pharmacy to recoupment of funds if the prescription was paid for

as originally billed, the patient received the prescription within the timeframe

that was medically necessary according to the prescriber, and the prescription

as dispensed provided ingredients that met the requirements of the prescrip-

tion.

Cont. Page 4

G O V E R N M E N T A L A F F A I R S R E P O R T Mark your Calendar Wyoming Pharmacy Association Winter CE Little America Hotels & Suites Cheyenne, WY January 31, 2015 Alaska Pharmacists Association 2015 Annual Convention Sheraton Anchorage Anchorage, AK February 13-15, 2015 AAP Annual Conference Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego, CA April 23-25, 2015 Nebraska Pharmacy Association Annual Convention 2015 Cornhusker Hotel Lincoln, NE April 24-25, 2015

IPC Member Conference Fontainebleau Miami Beach Miami Beach, FL

April 30 – May 3, 2015

Northwest Pharmacy Conven-tion Coeur d’Alene Resort Coeur d’Alene, ID May 28-31, 2015 Wyoming Pharmacy Association 98th Annual Convention Holiday Inn at the Buffalo Bill Village Resort Cody, WY June 12-14, 2015 Arizona Pharmacy Association Annual Convention Westin La Paloma Tucson, AZ June 25-28, 2015 New Mexico Pharmacists Asso-ciation 86th Annual Convention Crowne Plaza Hotel Albuquerque, New Mexico June 27-28, 2015 Cardinal RBC Show Venetian Hotel & Convention Center Las Vegas, NV July 22-25, 2015 McKesson Trade Show San Diego Convention Center San Diego, CA July 25-27, 2015 RxPlus Pharmacies 33rd Annual Meeting Westin Westminster 10600 Westminster Boulevard Westminster, CO 80020 August 14-16, 2015

3660 Wadsworth Blvd.

Wheat Ridge, CO 80033

Phone 303-463-4875 Fax 303-463-4880 Email info@rxplus.com

RxPlus Pharmacies, Inc.

RxPlus Pharmacies, Inc. is an organization of health care

providers which creates value by promoting the economic,

professional, educational, and political advancement of

community pharmacy. We do this for the health and well being of our communities.

Staff

Grant Kinn Executive Director

Kathy Muller

Director of Operations

Brad Young Director of Government Affairs

Ginger Jones

Director of Business Development

Leah Frank

Accounting Manager

John Starker IT / Social Media

Board of Directors

Bill Masse - President David Lamb - Vice President

Jere Maxwell - Treasurer Jennifer Palazzolo - Secretary

Tom Davis Joe Valdez K.C. Owen Jim Sajbel

Vicki Einhellig Stan Callas

Tom Gierwatoski Mike Bemis

Ky Davis Dan Scales

Governmental Affairs Cont.

Another bill that has been introduced that would impact pharmacies is Biosimilar Substitu-

tion. The bill would allow a pharmacist to substitute an FDA approved biosimilar for a bio-

logical product with the requirement that the pharmacist send a notification to the prescriber.

The way the bill is drafted, it would even require notification to the prescriber EVEN IF THE

PRESCRIPTION WAS FILLED EXACTLY AS PRESCRIBED IF there is a biosimilar avail-

able that meets the requirements of the FDA to be considered an INTERCHANGEABLE bio-

logical. It also requires a pharmacy to keep a record of the substitution and notification for two

years. The bill has been introduced in multiple states for the past three years by the manufac-

turers of biologicals. Pharmacist organizations nationwide have opposed the bill. The bill cre-

ates a barrier to entry for new biosimilars that are soon to be introduced to the market. APhA,

NCPA, NACDS, and other pharmacy organizations have opposed the bill. RxPlus has joined

the opposition.

Wyoming Legislation:

After initial discussions with pharmacists in Wyoming, RxPlus has been working with State

Representative Dan Kirkbride (R-Chugwater), the Wyoming Pharmacy Association, and the

Wyoming Retail Association on (WRA) legislation concerning PBM MAC pricing and audits.

The legislation is modeled after bills that passed unanimously in Oregon in 2013 and Wash-

ington in 2014. WRA represents the chain pharmacies. The PBM legislation has become a

priority to WRA. We will be working with WRA, Representative Kirkbride, and the Commis-

sioner of Insurance on a bill during the legislative interim for next year.

Arizona:

RxPlus has been working with the Arizona Pharmacy Association to develop a plan to get

PBM legislation introduced in 2016. Our Director of Business Development, Ginger Jones,

has been meeting with pharmacists and corresponding with the Association for several

months. Plans are being made to work during the current legislative session on providing in-

formation to legislators on the role of pharmacists and how PBMs operate.

Iowa:

In 2014 the Iowa legislature passed a bill to give the Iowa Insurance Commissioner the au-

thority to make certain demands of PBMs in the state. The legislation passed after one of the

PBMs operating in the state imposed MACs that were so severe that over 20 pharmacies in the

state were forced to close. Pharmacists across the state started a grassroots campaign to pass

the bill. After the bill passed unanimously, the PBMs filed a federal lawsuit to block the legis-

lation. The Iowa Pharmacy Association has asked for help funding the defense of the law.

RxPlus, along with other purchasing groups nationwide, will be providing financial help. The

lawsuit will probably take a couple of years, but it will have national impact on PBM policies

and state laws.

Provider Status:

Last year the state of California passed legislation recognizing pharmacists as Health Care

Providers. Although such a status does not currently allow any change in scope of practice or

give pharmacists the ability to bill any added services, it would give pharmacists such capacity

in rural areas if federal legislation passes to allow it. RxPlus has been working with the Deans

of the Schools of Pharmacy in Colorado to assure Colorado recognizes pharmacists as Health

Care Providers by state law.

Feel free to email me at brad@rxplus.com or call my cell phone (303) 842-6459.

Classifieds Pharmacist needed for part time fill-in work. Located at 191 E. Orchard Littleton, CO 80121. Contact K.C. Owen at Gem Pharmacy (303) 795-3154 or cell (303) 981-0930.