After 40 years of expertise, Good Neighbor Pharmacy is able to sort out no matter challenges lie forward for unbiased pharmacies.When AmerisourceBergen established Good Neighbor Pharmacy in the Eighties as a franchise program for independently owned pharmacies, the major focus of group pharmacy was allotting medicines. Although some pharmacies specialised in residence well being care wants, equivalent to sturdy medical tools, others in the house centered purely on retail.“Especially in the 60s, 70s, and early 80s, chain [pharmacies] weren’t as prevalent,” Brian Nightengale, president of group and specialty pharmacy and long-term care at AmerisourceBergen, advised Drug Topics®.“The independents had been the essential factor you noticed by way of pharmacies; chains had been extra regional and smaller—actually not the giant nationwide presence they’ve now.”As the position and affect of chain pharmacies started to evolve, Nightengale defined, the impetus for Good Neighbor Pharmacy, or GNP, was born.“When it was based in the early 80s, it was to create a nationwide model [with] nationwide assist to compete with the growth of the chains,” he stated. “As we obtained into the mid- to late 90s, the substantial development in chains and the speedy growth was a part of the development of Good Neighbor Pharmacy.”Over the previous 2.5 a long time, Nightengale has had a entrance row seat to the development and growth of Good Neighbor Pharmacy, previously serving as the president of the Good Neighbor Pharmacy Network. However, regardless of the adjustments throughout the business—starting from drug protection and reimbursement fashions in the early 2000s to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020—the Good Neighbor Pharmacy mission has stayed true.“We’ve remained constant in our mission over the previous 40 years to rally collectively unbiased pharmacies, to assist them in driving care and providers of their communities which can be a lot wanted, and to present them a extra highly effective voice and presence in the business,” he stated. Although the Good Neighbor Pharmacy providers have developed over time, “our sense of objective in supporting and utilizing our scale, scope, and experience…has not modified,” Nightengale stated.Jenni Zilka, the present president of Good Neighbor Pharmacy, agreed.“It’s such a journey we’ve been on with our pharmacy house owners and, as importantly, with their sufferers,” she stated. “Our preliminary focus once we began Good Neighbor Pharmacy was on shopping for energy [and] model consciousness. The objective was to really feel extra like a sequence for our unbiased pharmacies—centered on signage, rugs, striping, and the Good Neighbor Pharmacy model. As shopper and affected person wants and necessities have shifted, our pharmacies have continued to evolve with these altering wants.”In 2008, Zilka started constructing the AmerisourceBergen enterprise teaching program, an initiative that centered on serving to unbiased pharmacy members develop and optimize their companies. When the program kicked off, Zilka defined, it was run by a group of two. Today, there are practically 40 coaches working with Good Neighbor Pharmacies throughout the nation.Part of that work has concerned sustaining a line of sight into pharmacists’ regularly evolving wants. Even a decade in the past, a pharmacy proprietor wouldn’t have wanted to concern themselves with digital promoting or social media advertising and marketing. “[Today], we’re centered on a lot extra,” Zilka stated. That “extra” consists of aiding pharmacy house owners with the digital transformation essential to thrive in at the moment’s enterprise surroundings. Good Neighbor Pharmacy helps house owners with digital advertising and marketing by means of Facebook and Google, the latter of which was simply expanded to incorporate Google Shopping Ads, which is able to allow pharmacies to draw extra front-end buyers by making pharmacy stock obtainable to the group after they search for merchandise close to them. GNP additionally supplies front-end assist, which since January 2020, has included addressing the disruption and challenges confronted by each member of the well being care business throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.“This is my favourite subject proper now, as a result of our unbiased pharmacy house owners are actually, really heroes by way of how they stepped up throughout the COVID-19 pandemic,” Zilka stated. “Not solely from having to shift their enterprise mannequin from walk-ins to drive via, curbside service, and even supply, [but] additionally they organized meals drives, grocery supply, and so many issues inside their communities to assist.”And, she added, “We can be remiss if we didn’t discuss their vaccine efforts and the vital position they performed all through the vaccine course of. They needed to evolve on the fly.” Good Neighbor Pharmacy labored shortly to determine a federal community partnership with the CDC on behalf of unbiased pharmacies, offering shops with much-needed vaccines for their communities. In early April 2022, Good Neighbor Pharmacy formally surpassed 5 million vaccine doses1 despatched to collaborating unbiased pharmacy members.In half, this success was fueled by tireless advocacy work from the bigger Good Neighbor Pharmacy group. “A variety of the focus in advocacy [up until the COVID-19 pandemic] was at the federal degree,” Nightengale defined. “We began out needing to teach federal regulators and legislators in Congress about the pharmacy enterprise mannequin, the worth of group pharmacy, and [about] a few of the challenges that, fairly frankly, legal guidelines and laws had been creating, stopping pharmacists and pharmacies from offering the degree of care that they will.”One such instance, Nightengale famous, is the work Good Neighbor Pharmacy and AmerisourceBergen has accomplished to handle direct and oblique remuneration (DIR) charges. Nightengale recollects spending as much as 2.5 years attempting to teach members of Congress and their workers on what DIR charges had been, what they stood for, and what precisely it represented in the bigger Medicare ecosystem. Once completed, that work was in a position to shift towards addressing extra particular points, together with “the issues [DIR fees] trigger, the way it will increase affected person out-of-pocket prices, and particular laws that’s required for reform,” Nightengale stated.“That’s simply 1 instance of the evolution of training into actual suggestions and motion,” he stated. “One of the greatest outcomes of that’s lastly, we now have laws that has an actual likelihood of shifting ahead to radically remodel DIR charges.”2But regardless of all that Zilka, Nightengale, and Good Neighbor Pharmacy have completed, the work is much from accomplished. The pharmacy panorama is continually in movement, and much more adjustments are on the horizon.“As I take into consideration our pharmacies and how they’ve developed over the previous 40 years, there’s a lot to be pleased with,” stated Zilka, “however we additionally nonetheless have a lot work to do. Most importantly, we [must] proceed to advocate and evolve the mannequin of pharmacy as a acknowledged and significant extension of the total well being care system and as a vital entry level for those that want the most care.”Nightengale agreed, expressing his hopes that the very public response by unbiased pharmacies to the COVID-19 pandemic can create a possibility for the career. “My hope is that by means of this advocacy momentum we now have by means of elevated consciousness, folks all throughout this nation acknowledge the worth of pharmacy and the talents pharmacies have to offer care for [patients] and their households, and that they [can] profit from the unimaginable accessibility, experience, and customized care the group pharmacies and their workers present.”Looking ahead to subsequent yr, Zilka anticipates Good Neighbor Pharmacy will “double down on the advocacy. We’re really at an inflection level as a career,” she defined, “and I believe we [must] proceed to share the vital story of the position pharmacies performed all through the COVID-19 pandemic and the vital position they will play going ahead.” The group may also be investing in future unbiased pharmacy house owners by growing entry to training by means of a brand new scholarship program funded in partnership between Good Neighbor Pharmacy and the AmerisourceBergen Foundation. The Good Neighbor Pharmacy Scholarship Program will assist Black and African American college students pursuing a Doctor of Pharmacy diploma at a traditionally Black faculty or college. This scholarship highlights the rewarding profession of group pharmacy and underscores the significance of various illustration in the pharmacy business.“It’s very easy to rise up each morning and champion (*40*) unbiased pharmacy house owners,” Zilka stated. “Their resilience is second to none, [and] the care they supply to their sufferers and communities is phenomenal. We’ve been in a position to assist them develop and evolve as the business and affected person wants evolve round them…main us towards the potential to extend entry, fairness, and the providers they’re in a position to present sufferers.”Learn extra about Good Neighbor Pharmacy’s fortieth anniversary right here.ReferencesAmerisourceBergen & Good Neighbor Pharmacy surpass 5 million vaccine doses allotted by means of its Federal Retail Pharmacy Program for COVID-19 vaccination. News launch. AmerisourceBergen. April 4, 2022. Accessed July 15, 2022. https://www.amerisourcebergen.com/newsroom/press-releases/amerisourcebergen-good-neighbor-pharmacy-surpass-5-million-vaccine-doses-allocatedAmerisourceBergen commends the introduction of S. 1909 & H.R. 3554, the Pharmacy DIR Reform to Reduce Senior Drug Costs Act, in Congress. News launch. AmerisourceBergen. June 8, 2021. Accessed July 15, 2022. https://www.amerisourcebergen.com/newsroom/media-statements/amerisourcebergen-commends-the-introduction
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