Kerr pushes the boundaries of pharmacy care

Drug Store News, Dec 17, 2001 by James Frederick

Petri said Kerr also will exploit what he said are growing opportunities to work more profitability with pharmaceutical manufacturers in areas like drug therapy compliance programs. "It's important to pharmaceutical companies to have someone out in the marketplace to assure that patients are in compliance with their therapy and taking their drugs correctly. So more and more drug manufacturers want to partner up with pharmacy," he said.

Those efforts could generate additional revenue. Far more crucial, perhaps, is the question of who pays for patient care. Petri said the chain has made considerable progress over the last year or two in linking up with third party health plans and corporate insurers to obtain funding for pilot programs in diabetes management and other patient-care activities.

"We've made great strides in patient pay," he said, including "much greater representation" from third party government and corporate health plan payers. Besides the funding provided by cash-paying customers, Kerr is also getting support for its pharmacy-care efforts from various government-sponsored health programs.

"If the asthma pilot is successful, we can take it out and demonstrate that success to the PBMs and employer-sponsored plans," said Petri.

Workplace efficiency

On another front, the chain is pushing for a more efficient pharmacy workplace with robotic technology--it now has ScriptPro robotic dispensers in several of its stores--and has plans for off-site dispensing.

"We're hoping to have a central-fill site by next March in the Greensboro area" of North Carolina, said Mike Brown, a former Kerr district manager who now heads the company's pharmacy development design team. "It will be a separate facility ... that could lead to a significant reduction in workload."

Brown's team was created early this year to flesh out Kerr's new mission statement, which calls for a major refocus of marketing, merchandising and in-store service components to elevate the core importance of pharmacy services and clinical care and other health-related products.