Board Requirements
The State Board of Pharmacy requires a pharmacy management system in place and the ability to generate a label that complies with the regulations in the state in which you plan to operate. You will need the ability to generate a prescription in the system for a patient, a label, and a history of your patients’ medications. States that mandate an eRx, or an electronic prescription, will require that you have software that can accept eRxs. But, these are simply the bare minimum requirements that each and every retail pharmacy software package on the market will have. A successful pharmacy business needs more.
Filling Prescriptions
Filling prescriptions and prescription management are the most essential features of a pharmacy software system. The best pharmacy management software supports the need for an efficient and simple prescription system with many custom features and options. Pharmacists need the ability to complete data entry with ease and accuracy, organize prescriptions that need to be dispensed or filled, and perform verification. With the best pharmacy software systems, you can customize this process. Datascan offers a customizable prescription workflow system with a variety of options for pharmacy owners to build a flow that works best for them.
Streamlining Workflow
Pharmacy software systems are used to manage prescription workflow. The best systems help to streamline and organize this process. There are several ways to manage the flow of prescriptions from data entry through to verification, and in Datascan’s pharmacy software, you can choose the best options for your pharmacy.
Datascan Pharmacy Software Workflow Step Options
- 1-step open-ended workflow that involves simple data entry only
- 2-step workflow that sends all prescriptions directly to a pharmacist for verification
- 3-step workflow that introduces a dispense step after data entry
- 4-step workflow that requires a pharmacist to pre-verify data entry prior to dispensing
- 5-step workflow that requires a pharmacist to pre-verify data entry prior to a prescription being adjudicated to a third-party insurance plan
Managing Inventory
Pharmacy software systems are used to manage your inventory: the largest overhead in your pharmacy. This is one of the most important features built into the best pharmacy management systems – something Datacan includes for free. Perpetual inventory is tracked and easily managed with integrations to your wholesalers through EDI: Electronic Data Interchange. This allows you to constantly have updated costs and on-hand quantities in your pharmacy system. Through filling and dispensing of prescriptions, inventory is automatically deducted, and by automatically uploading inventory via EDI with your wholesalers, inventory and costs are updated. The software allows you to segregate and manage different inventories. For example, you can break out and manage 340B inventory separate from your standard drug inventory. The software can be set up for auto re-order points, it can shop for you by finding the lowest price across your wholesalers, and it can help with inventory forecasting based on historical fill data to avoid overstocking medications.
Building Medication Adherence
Pharmacy software systems are designed to help build better medication adherence and compliance with patients. The top pharmacy software, such as Datascan’s Winpharm software, build in a variety of features to ensure patients are taking their medications on time and properly. Features like automatic refill, medsync, refill reminder text notifications, and ready-for-pickup text notifications help to manage chronic maintenance medications for your patients. Datascan’s software even helps proactively reach out to doctors by sending automatic refill requests on maintenance medications when a patient is close to running out of medication. On top of these features, we can build adherence through warnings, our adherence dashboard, and ease of communication with patients via our 2-way SMS texting module.
Final Thoughts
A pharmacy software system is an essential piece of technology that you will need to run a successful independent pharmacy. The top pharmacy software systems will offer a variety of features to help build patient medication adherence and efficiency while boosting profits in your community pharmacy. In other words, they will offer you advanced technology well beyond what the board of pharmacy requires to open your new independent community pharmacy. Datascan pharmacy management software is the top choice with affordable features tailored towards the needs of independent pharmacies.
Kevin Minassian is the President of Datascan Software. Under his leadership, the company rapidly expanded to provide pharmacy management software on a national level. Over the last 15+ years, he has ensured that Datascan has continuously evolved to offer innovative solutions for independent pharmacies while still offering world-class customer support. He is passionate about helping independent pharmacies to remain competitive, achieve success, and offer the very best service to their communities.
