What Challenges Do Independent Pharmacists Face Today?

Jim Springer, Vice President of RxOwnership for the Southern Region, and Chris Cella, RpH, National Vice President of RxOwnership, from McKesson Corporation discuss the most common challenges they see independent pharmacists facing.

Transcript:

Chris Cella, RpH: A lot of the challenges the pharmacists are facing now, on the independent side, is with the decreased reimbursements and the DIR fees. They really have to manage their own portfolio of their business more tightly than they usually did before. So, there are a lot of requirements now about inventory, about certain amounts of stock on hand, about payroll percentages. So, they really have to go back and really take a deep dive into their PNL to really make sure that they're managing their business and managing their financials as best as they can due to the decreased reimbursements."

Jim Springer: "And the issue with that is, that so many of them really don't have the ability to understand that profit and loss statement, that they've got an accounant, that they recieve a PNL perhaps on a fairly regulary basis, we hope, but many of them don't understand enough about that whole financial process to understand "What are those key metrics? What are those items I need to be thinking about? What's the benchmark for gross profit, for net profit, for wages, so that I can manage my store appropriately?" Again, that's the kind of the thing we would really like to help them with, is guiding them through those particular benchmarks, so that they understand what those red flags are, and then do something about them."