Cardinal Health to introduce new services for hospitals to leverage outpatient pharmacies

Cardinal Health will this week introduce new services that help hospitals leverage outpatient pharmacies to address two of the their most significant challenges: how to expand the quality care they provide to patients and how to increase revenue.

According to Jon Giacomin, president of Cardinal Health's Pharmaceutical Distribution business, fully optimized outpatient pharmacies can enable hospitals to:

• Improve the quality and continuity of care patients receive after they are discharged;
• Reduce readmission rates by improving medication adherence after patients are discharged;
• Establish a platform for participation in bundled payment systems and Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) which encourage providers to focus beyond inpatient care to pre-admission and post-discharge patient care; and  
• Generate savings for employee prescription benefit plans by providing prescriptions for employees, their dependents, and hospital volunteers.

Fully optimized outpatient pharmacies can also enable qualified hospitals, public health clinics, academic medical centers and state-run outpatient facilities to appropriately participate in federal drug pricing programs, which offer drug discounts to help federally qualified health care facilities provide care for underinsured and uninsured patients.

By leveraging its decades of experience launching and strengthening outpatient pharmacies, Cardinal Health aims to help these hospitals operate successful, efficient outpatient pharmacies that expand the quality care they provide to their communities.  

"Our outpatient pharmacy was struggling until we engaged Cardinal Health to better manage its business and clinical operations," said Ray R. Maddox, PharmD, FASHP, director of Clinical Pharmacy and Research & Pulmonary Medicine at St. Joseph's/Candler Health System in Savannah, Ga. "Since we engaged Cardinal Health in 2006, we have seen significant, consistent, year-over-year increases in the profitability of our outpatient pharmacy."

Whether a hospital needs help creating and implementing a plan for a new outpatient pharmacy, or wants to optimize its existing one, Cardinal Health can design and develop outpatient pharmacy programs that deliver new sources of revenue, increase efficiency, improve quality and extend more coordinated care to their patients. Key services include:

• Business Development Analysis, including pro-forma projections, feasibility studies, financial and operating models for new pharmacies and performance assessments for existing ones.
• New Pharmacy Opening Services that provide expertise and guidance for pharmacy layout, merchandising, automation and workflow, as well as coordination of licensing requirements and recommendations for salaries and purchasing processes.
• Outpatient Pharmacy Management provides day-to-day pharmacy leadership and/or pharmacy staff, including customized policies and procedures templates, staff training and education, assistance with enrollment in and implementation of indigent care programs, customized marketing programs and coordination of technology upgrades.
• Project implementation programs that support a hospital pharmacy's existing staff with the successful completion of one-time outpatient pharmacy projects that require extra resources or special knowledge and skills.

"In our work with thousands of hospital pharmacies across the country, we are seeing that many hospitals are leaving drug savings – and revenues -- on the table because they either don't operate an outpatient pharmacy at all, or they have one that is not fully optimized," said Giacomin. "Our subject matter experts and best practice strategies can help hospitals implement and optimize outpatient pharmacies to improve both the quality and costs of care patients receive, even after the point of discharge."