Physician Dispensing Is An Excellent Ancillary Income For Physicians

Physicians have been hammered by increasing costs and declining reimbursements

. With no increase in revenue, increasing costs of rent, utilities, supplies, labor, and medical malpractice insurance, there is no relief in sight.

Ancillary services such as in-office dispensing have a substantial potential for profit to alleviate this revenue shortfall. If the average office prescribes 20 prescriptions per day and is open five (5) days a week at $8 profit per prescription that's an extra $800 per week! The potential for refills further enhances the revenue opportunity, and saves the office staff time in handling these calls from the pharmacy.

In-office dispensing leads to better compliance, as patients walk out of the office with prescription in hand and are more likely to follow through with the treatment. Convenience for patients is enhanced and appreciated, as they won't have to deal with the hassle of an extra stop on the way home. But what is even more important is that the needs of patients are met at affordable costs, which generate both happier patients and higher revenue for the office.

Today repackagers approved by the FDA order drugs in bulk to be sorted and counted into individual prescription bottles which then are sent to physician offices for dispensing. That means no time wasted counting out pills, it's already been done. Not only is it a time saver, but it also reduces the risk of mistakes.

The question on the table is "Why isn't physician dispensing as common now as it was in the early 1900s?" The answer is simple: inventory barriers and liability management. What makes physician dispensing a plausible idea today is the creation of easy-to-use software that manages inventory and patients, while tracking prescription habits and drug interactions.

MedX Dispensing is an example of the innovations that will make in-office dispensing easier. It uses high technology software to track when inventory is getting low and can automatically re-order more. A Drug Utilization Review section will seek out contraindications of existing prescriptions with the new medications to insure patient safety. The real time adjudication software will submit a claim and have an approval with collection amounts within 2 seconds.

From an ethical standpoint, in-office dispensing is perfectly acceptable.

According to the American Medical Association Code of Ethics, physicians may dispense drugs to patients from their office, but patients have the right to have the prescription filled elsewhere and exploitation of patients is strictly prohibited. Legally, physician dispensing is accepted and generally accepted in 44 of the 50 states, and has increasing substantially in recent years as technology eases concerns of tracking patient and inventory data.

The financial incentives of in-office dispensing are a little harder to understand. Here the worry is that physicians will overprescribe in order to make a profit, a worry that especially affects worker's compensation patients. Worker's comp patients have a tendency to forgo filling the prescription 20% of the time and refilling 30% of the time. With physician dispensing, patients that normally would have foregone filling the prescription will now walk out with it. This cost will then be passed on to the worker's compensation provider.

by: physicianpharmacy101

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