Enhancing front end, clinical work

In the past year, AmerisourceBergen has introduced a number of initiatives to help their Good Neighbor Pharmacy franchisees not only build out the clinical aspects of their business, but also develop the front ends of the pharmacy business and better connect to the patient.

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“Access to patient care is extremely important,” David Neu, EVP retail strategy at AmerisourceBergen and president of Good Neighbor Pharmacy, told Drug Store News. “We do a lot to make sure that we help the pharmacist with some of their clinical needs,” he said. “We’re trying to find the balance between the training that we do on the clinical side ... and what we are trying to do on the front end by giving them support from the supplier community,” Neu added.



To help improve front-end performance, Good Neighbor Pharmacy introduced its Pharmacy Transformation Services program, in which they remake a pharmacy’s front end to better meet the demands of today’s business. “This has really taken off,” Neu said, pointing to the overall 2070 lift in front-end sales across the stores that had been transformed. Other benchmarks of success include a 2.7% lift in gross margin and an overall 870 increase in prescription volume.



Supplementing that program is another true differentiator for GNP — the company’s 20 business coaches deployed across the nation. “They really just look at the overall financial health and ways to improve it,” Neu said.



To help support pharmacists’ clinical work, AmerisoureBergen recently introduced its GNP University, which so far features 11 interactive training modules. More than 25% of GNP University users are enrolled in a course bundle regarding compliance, Neu noted, offering them a one-stop-shop for the most prevalent compliance issues they face.



To better connect GNP pharmacies to patients, AmerisourceBergen boosted its social media offering with a newly refaced GNP Facebook and GNP website, and a new GNP app. “We see this as a platform for growth,” Neu said.