Using experience to help customers provide for patients
Having been around for 39 years, Spartanburg, S.C.-based pharmacy solutions company QS/1 has seen the pharmacy business change several times, all the while providing tools to help pharmacies navigate the changes and provide services to their patients. As pharmacy shifts its focus to outcomes and implements more clinical services, QS/1 knows that its latest solution will be able to assist in managing the increasing amount of documents pharmacies deal with on a daily basis.
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QS/1 president Tammy Devine told Drug Store News that the company is anticipating a rollout of its latest solution, QS/1 Document Management, or QDM, later this year. Born out of an increasing amount of clinical services being performed by retail pharmacies, QDM is a solution seeking to help pharmacies keep track of the documents they’re receiving and creating by offering their patients immunizations or specialty drugs. Devine said QDM was well received at the company’s customer conference in July, and it expects to launch it in the fall.
“We’ve actually had it in some test locations, so we’re really excited about it for the retail market,” Devine said. “Long-term care has had document management for a long time, but there really haven’t been a lot of products utilizing that in the retail market. We’ve just seen now, with all the different types of documentation retail is having to manage that they need something more than scanning in a document and storing it — they really need to be able to manage the documentation.”
QDM will integrate with both of QS/1’s pharmacy management platforms, SharpRx, which it unveiled last year, as well as its established NRx platform. SharpRx can be operated using a touch screen, a keyboard or a mouse, based on a pharmacy team member’s preferences, and in the months since its initial launch, Devine said the company has been working on building up the platform’s capabilities and interfaces. SharpRx integrates with robotic systems and RxMedic’s RetrieveRx will-call storage and retrieval system, whose features include a one-click return-to-stock that reverses any claims, IVR outreach or workflow records on a prescription that hasn’t been picked up. Devine said the RetrieveRx system has seen increased demand recently.
“We’ve seen a lot of movement in pharmacies utilizing it because as they’re filling prescriptions they can track if the prescription was picked up,” Devine said. “It’s one of those things that’s been around for a while, but with the push on adherence and pharmacies doing medication synchronization, they’re trying to get ahead ... which means you’re filling ahead more than you used to. If you’re doing that, you really need to be able to manage the will-call because you don’t want those prescriptions sitting there for two or three weeks and no one picking them up.”
SharpRx and NRx’s integration with RetrieveRx is only one of the several integrations and interfaces QS/1 has built into the platform as it looks to the future. Moving forward, Devine said that the company is looking to continue increasing its capabilities, which currently include the ability to be used in multiple locations. And as it builds up SharpRx, Devine said all of QS/1’s future offerings would integrate with both the SharpRx and NRx platforms.
“If people are comfortable using what they have, we continue to support that,” Devine said. “There are just a lot of tools that we can utilize within SharpRx that makes it a good platform for heading forward. We continue to support and enhance the existing products that we have, but we wanted to be able to offer a platform that has a newer look and feel to pharmacies.”
QS/1
HQ: Spartanburg, S.C.
Founded: 1977
CEO: Tammy Devine
Specialty: Software solutions