Brian Nightengale

System and Network Investments Are Paying Off

Drug Store News, April 14, 2017

Drug Store News spoke with Brian Nightengale, President of Good Neighbor Pharmacy, about AmerisourceBergen strategic approach to independent pharmacy and commitment to enable pharmacists to practice at the top of their license. Excerpt below, click here to read the full story.

By pharmacists: For pharmacists. That simple edict not only served as the genesis behind AmerisourceBergen’s new ABC Order system that was piloted last year, but also captures the spirit of how AmerisourceBergen and its Good Neighbor Pharmacy franchise operation approach independent pharmacy.

And that is to ascertain what tools community pharmacists need to succeed both today and tomorrow, and then package those tools as part of an overall solution set that can both be intuitively incorporated into a pharmacy workflow and meaningfully contribute to that operation’s bottom line. “One of our biggest accomplishments [in the past 18 months] is significant growth in the utilization of our new solutions,” Brian Nightengale, president of Good Neighbor Pharmacy, told Drug Store News.

The overall Good Neighbor Pharmacy investment in member services that AmerisourceBergen has made is helping to optimize front-end sales by providing access to business coaching, manufacturer promotions and new reporting tools that incorporate point-of-sale data.

In 2016, AmerisourceBergen also celebrated the one-year anniversary of its PSAO Elevate Provider Network. “A lot of what we’ve accomplished in the past 18 months [with Elevate] has been around innovation, going beyond payer contracting and adding solutions that help our customers manage their business better,” Nightengale said. “Through these enhancements, we’ve had a great deal of success, [including] the pre- and post-edits and reconciliation services, the central-pay solution and patient-engagement center.” The patient-engagement center, for example, helps operators take advantage of services that can contribute to such expanded revenue streams as comprehensive medication reviews, medication synchronization and adherence programming, he explained.

And it’s working. “When we looked at [IMS Health data for] year-over-year prescription growth for our Elevate members, the year-over-year growth was 3.4% [as compared with] 1.9% for the overall community market, which includes chains,” Nightengale said. “The growth for non-Elevate independents was only 0.2%.”

Not only is Elevate helping drive prescription growth, it also is helping to drive patient adherence – helping to improve CMS Star quality measures – and reduce DIR fees for pharmacies enrolled in the network, Nightengale said. Another highlight of 2016 was the introduction of the ABC Order engine. Scheduled to go live this April, the system features a new user interface custom designed with direct input from Good Neighbor Pharmacy operators.

The company also has worked hard to improve its buying power with generic drug manufacturers, Nightengale said. “We’ve invested a lot in that area. When you put all these [solutions] together, we’re making a positive difference in the profitability of our stores, even in a challenging reimbursement environment.”

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