CEO Update: Increasing access to pharmacy services

Mariah Hollabaugh, director of our pharmacy system, and I recently talked about our growth in pharmacy services. Our robust pharmacy system includes three retail pharmacies, the hospital pharmacy and the CMH Senior Pharmacy, which serves residents in our long-term care facilities.

It’s been great to see the growth we’ve had in our pharmacy services, especially at Stephens Pharmacy, where we’ve seen year-over-year growth.

Keep reading this blog post or watch the video to learn more about pharmacy services at CMH.

Retail pharmacy growth and expansion

Calhoun: Tell us how many scripts we see each year and how that has grown over the last few years.

Hollabaugh: That story really starts back in 2019. If you look at Bolivar as a community, at that time, we had seven retail pharmacy locations. Now, we have three retail pharmacy locations. So, this team has had a lot of change and growth over that time.

Calhoun: Growth presents a lot of challenges. One of the challenges was how to keep up with all the prescriptions and difficulty finding more staff. So we also invested in technology to help with that growth. Tell us a little about the packager and the systems we put in place to facilitate the growth.

Hollabaugh: We added a pharmacy packaging system that allows us to bottle our prescriptions. We send about half of the volume through that packager now. Instead of having techs on the front line counting out prescriptions, we’re able to automate that process safely and effectively for the increased volumes.

Calhoun: How many prescriptions do we fill per day here at Stephens?

Hollabaugh: That number continues to change every week. Since the Evans acquisition, we’ve seen numbers over a thousand every day. I looked back at this time in 2020, and we were filling 8,000 scripts a month. We’ve doubled that volume to over 16,000, and the Evans addition will increase that number by another 25%.

Calhoun: We recently had news of the acquisition of the Bolivar and Buffalo locations of Evans Drugs. That is in line with our strategic plan to increase access to medications for our patients, not only here in Bolivar, but in all the communities we serve. Evans was great to work with. Tell us about that transition and how it’s going.

Hollabaugh: We’ve had a whirlwind getting all of that settled, but we did welcome 11 new staff members to our team, both here in Bolivar and in Buffalo. We’re very grateful to have access to CMH pharmacy services for our patients in Buffalo.

Full-service pharmacies

Calhoun: One of the things I’m excited about with the addition of the Buffalo pharmacy is how we can integrate the operations of the community pharmacy with our medical practice there in Buffalo. Tell us more about the clinical services we provide in our pharmacies.

Hollabaugh: We offer services like walk-in immunizations Monday through Friday and even Saturday. We have a medication synchronization program that has helped us sustain the growth we’ve seen over the last several years. It’s not just automatically filling your prescriptions. It’s a conversation with you about what changes you’ve had with your medications. Have you been to the doctor’s office in the last month or three months, depending on how frequently we refill your prescriptions? We want to make sure we’re incorporating those changes into what we’re doing for your pharmacy needs.

Increasing access

Calhoun: Early on, one of our growth strategies was to partner with the FQHC (federally qualified health center) Ozarks Community Health Center to provide pharmacy services in Urbana. We have a really unique model there. I’d like you to tell us what that model looks like in Urbana and how we’ve integrated it with their medical practice.

Hollabaugh: We’re using telehealth with video and audio equipment to monitor the work of a pharmacy technician at that remote site, and all of the pharmacist verification is happening here in Bolivar. It’s a really innovative way to bring pharmacy services to a community that wouldn’t otherwise have the volume to sustain a pharmacist all day.

Calhoun: Right now, we see in the news that there is almost a drawing back of pharmacy services, especially in underserved, rural areas. At the same time they’re doing that, we’re seizing the opportunity to provide more services. That really speaks to CMH’s commitment to these communities, making sure they have the best health care and access to professionals, not just their primary care physicians but also pharmacists and medication management.

Hollabaugh: We also spend a lot of time making sure patients can access their medications. A lot of work goes into our drug discount program and making sure that if there’s someone that’s going to go without, we find a way to make sure that they either get a different prescription from their physician that still meets their needs or we put them into a program that allows them to access their medications at a price they can afford.

Alignment with CMH’s vision

Calhoun: It’s great to see all these growth opportunities that we’ve seen happen in the past, and I know we have a lot of vision for the future. This fits in line with CMH’s mission and vision to provide compassionate care to all of our communities with the safest and highest-quality care. Pharmacy plays a big role in that, and I appreciate what our pharmacy team is doing to help us achieve our vision for our communities.

Michael Calhoun shares the latest happenings at CMH in his monthly CEO Updates. He is the CEO/executive director of CMH and the Citizens Memorial Health Care Foundation.