Page 43 - HME Business, April 2017

POLISHING YOUR POINT OF SALE
When it comes to your DME pharmacy point of sale (POS)— the area in your store where goods or services are paid for—there are two distinct, very important components integral to POS success: the technological infrastructure and the merchandising.
Addressing the software infrastructure side of this equation, Jason Williams, national sales manager for Retail Pharmacy and HME, Western Region, for QS/1, which produces HME software integrated with a full retail or LTC pharmacy program, says the goal for the DME pharmacist is to have a truly integrated system among your pharmacy, HME/DME department and your POS.
“A POS that interfaces to your management system will still require the pharmacy to perform a good bit of manual work,” he says. “An integrated system provides a single patient record, improved inventory control and enhanced reporting. With shared data capabilities, you can utilize doctor and patient demographics among systems.” In addi- tion, he says Integration between systems reduces data entry and lets information move and update between the systems, providing more efficient inventory management and accounts receivable.
However, Williams says the norm for DME pharmacies is most use only a pharmacy management system and an integrated point of sale. They either do not have a HME/DME software management solution or if they do it is not integrated with the pharmacy and POS. He says that for QS/1, about 44 percent of its pharmacy customers do some level of HME, and only 31 percent of their pharmacy clients use integrated POS.
“If you apply those percentages to the entire independent pharmacy market, about 8,800 pharmacies are doing some HME/DME and fewer
THE RECIPE FOR POS SUCCESS MIXES INTEGRATED SOFTWARE INFRASTRUCTURE WITH A SMART MERCHANDISING STRATEGY
By Joseph Duffy
than 6,200 pharmacies have POS,” he says.
Phil Deschaine, marketing director for Universal Software Solutions,
which offers a pharmacy solution that integrates into DME software, says, “DME Pharmacies have struggled and will continue to struggle from a tech standpoint when they try to force a pharmacy process into a DME software setting, or keep pharmacy and DME separate using two disjointed softwares. Processing a DME order is traditionally just
as labor intensive as filling a pharmacy order, but without the benefit of instant verification and approval that the pharmacy relies on. DME pharmacies need flexibility. To compete as a retail pharmacy the process must be fast and polished to retain customers who are used to large national chains.”
TECHNOLOGY CONSIDERATIONS IN POS INTEGRATION
Williams points out three major features that DME pharmacy POS soft- ware should include:
1. Since HME/DME Medicare Part B and most other insurance carries require that the DOS (date of service) be the day the patient picks up the item, your POS software should do two things. First, if the prescription is filled on Friday, March 3, but not picked up until Tuesday, March 7, the item must not be billed from either the pharmacy or HME/DME manage- ment systems until the patient picks up the item. Second, when the item is picked up by the patient, the POS should send the pick-up date back to the system and automatically update the DOS from March 3 to March 7. The item should then be released for billing to the insurance carrier.
2. A truly integrated system should support the acceptance of FSA/ HSA credit cards. These are credit cards tied to a flex spending account
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DME Pharmacy | April 2017 Rx11