Full-service, independent Pets & People Pharmacy in Pearland, TX has one mission: make human and pet patient health their primary concern.
The Houston-area pharmacy offers COVID-19 vaccinations, compounding, durable medical equipment, long-term care consulting, medication adherence and synchronization, medication therapy management, and pet care. They also provide home delivery and an online shop for health products.
After working with another company specializing in dentistry marketing, they heard about Digital Pharmacist at a trade show and decided to make the switch. Last summer, Pets & People became a full-suite client, signing on for our healthsite, mobile app, IVR, and digital marketing.
The pharmacy also adopted the Patient Engagement Platform (PEP) and our latest feature, the Vaccination Scheduler, when it launched in April. Vaccination Scheduler allows pharmacists to collect, organize patient information, and set vaccination appointments.
In just 6 weeks, over 210 pharmacies adopted our Vaccination Scheduler and scheduled more than 23,500 COVID-19 vaccination appointments. Pets & People was one of the first to upgrade their COVID-19 vaccination process from pen and paper to a customized online patient experience. Since the adoption, they have seen a related significant increase in website traffic.
Since launching the Vaccination Scheduler, Digital Pharmacist has seen:
210+
pharmacy locations adopt the scheduler
8,000+
appointments booked by patients
15,500+
appointments created by pharmacists
“Switch today and you’ll be rewarded for it! There are so many things you can do, not only with the website, but with voicemail inboxes and patient messaging too. Once I learned how to use it, it was so beneficial. You look back and say, “Why didn’t I have this before?”
According to Combs, Pets & People is already planning the best way to use the Vaccination Scheduler for other services post-COVID, especially for upcoming flu seasons.
Pets & People began offering COVID-19 vaccination services in early March. According to staff pharmacist Chicha Combs, having a customizable website with healthcare service capabilities ready to go made all the difference.
“We initially tried to do it ourselves with a couple of freelancers. But then we switched to Digital Pharmacist and there was a night and day difference. They had fantastic customer service and the tool lifted a burden off of our shoulders!”
Combs says he’s really appreciated how easy the site has been to work with. “Digital Pharmacist’s professionalism and website features have been very beneficial and it looks very well done. The focus on pharmacy also helps, like the pill identifier and those extra widgets make it stand out against our competition.”
To help get the word out about COVID-19 vaccinations, Combs worked with the Digital Pharmacist team to add a website banner that would direct patients to the waitlist. Combs cited the edits with Digital Pharmacist a “very, very smooth process.”
After making the updates promoting their new service, Combs and the Pets & People team saw a big jump in website traffic, gaining 380% more visitors in March compared to February and the team certainly felt the difference when it came to scheduling vaccination appointments.
“We started off with the phone, a pen, and paper. There were so many people to schedule in one day that the scheduler was a godsend! Having Digital Pharmacist available to help with scheduling has made the workflows in this process a lot easier – we can just put it out there, they sign up and it’s a done deal. So thank you.” Combs said.
With the website updates, vaccination scheduler, and new demand for appointments, Pets & People saw a total of over 900% more traffic to their website in 2 months.
According to Combs, Pets & People is already planning the best way to use the Vaccination Scheduler for other services post-COVID, especially for upcoming flu seasons.
Digital Pharmacist is committed to supporting pharmacies as they promote and administer crucial COVID-19 vaccines. Learn more about our Patient Engagement Platform and vaccination features today.
