Warren’s strives to be a pharmacy that knows its customers by name, combining experienced staff with personalized service. They offer drive-thru and delivery pharmacy services, COVID-19 PPE, durable medical equipment, med sync and MTM, health and beauty products, and cards, gifts, and office supplies.
Owner and pharmacist Stephen Joyce, RPh, first heard about Digital Pharmacist during a Cardinal Health conference. In early 2017 he signed on for our digital marketing, secure messaging, and branded website and mobile app products.
Digital Pharmacist’s most recent feature, the Vaccination Waitlist, was released to current clients last month to support COVID-19 vaccination inquiries and programs. In just 6 weeks, over 500 pharmacies have enabled the waitlist. One of the early adopters, Warren’s Drug Store has seen hundreds of patient sign-ups and saved significant amounts of time on fielding inquiries.
As of March 2021, Digital Pharmacist has seen:
550+
Pharmacy locations with waitlists enabled
386,600+
COVID-19 waitlist form assessments completed
2,558,840+
waitlist page views
According to Joyce, it’s quite an improvement on their previous system. “We had a paper on a clipboard and were just taking patients’ names, dates of birth, phone numbers, and the date that they called. Then we learned about Digital Pharmacist’s waitlist and we were able to take our paper copy and add all those folks to the digital waitlist so we had them all in one place.”
The pharmacy had been getting 3-4 dozen phone calls a day asking about the COVID-19 vaccine, despite Joyce’s pre-recorded messages with up-to-date COVID information.To help save time and streamline inquiries, Warren’s made several workflow updates to their IVR system, healthsite, and digital marketing.
They started by recording COVID-19 service and vaccine updates for their IVR and directing patients to the website waitlist form. This helped them get on top of patients’ frequently asked questions and direct the flow of inbound traffic.
The team also requested that we make several updates to their healthsite. These included a “COVID-19 Vaccines Coming Soon” homepage banner with vaccine fact sheets and a smaller banner directing patients to the waitlist. Their COVID-19 page, which houses the Vaccination Waitlist form, now includes a waitlist disclaimer and update on vaccination and service availability.
Finally, they began promoting COVID-19 services like delivery and drive-thru, home tests, vaccinations, and the waitlist on their Facebook page with branded graphics.
“Since we revamped all that with you guys, and it’s helped to offset the number of calls we’re fielding tremendously. We still have some, but not near as many as what we used to,” Joyce said.
Patients who still keep calling are directed to the website by a pharmacist or technician, and if they don’t have internet access or aren’t computer-savvy, a staff member will go through the questions on the phone and add them to the waitlist manually.
“It’s certainly helped us, especially now that we’re not keeping all this paper scattered around everywhere. So now, it’s just onto the scheduling platform and integrating it together and then we’ll go from there.”
Digital Pharmacist has supported hundreds of pharmacies and thousands of patients during COVID-19. Transform your pharmacy business today with our digital patient engagement and communication suite, Vaccination Waitlist, and upcoming Vaccination Scheduler.
