BUYLINE This is us, too


Back in early April, the Good Friday holiday this year had to share the spotlight with two other events: My middle-aged birthday and my third (if not fourth) bout with COVID-19 – despite being vaccinated and boosted.


Rick Dana Barlow Senior Editor


But that’s not the point of this prosaic screed. Once again – historically, the third time now – here’s yet another anecdote on how the retail supply chain industry is not that far ahead of the healthcare supply chain after all. For you veteran HPN readers, you may recall how I shared several vignettes highlighting a state government agency and two retail outlets that experienced the type of information technology challenges that were supposed to have been solved in those areas within the fi rst decade of the new millennium. One of the examples involved a certain retail outlet with a bullseye for a logo. (See my SKU’d column, “Chicken Brittle,” September 2019 HPN, p. 4, (https:// hpnonline.com/21093188) and before that, the “Flash Point” item in my Fast Foreward column in April 2007, HPN.)


Here’s what happened at an unnamed retail pharmacy outlet that shares a lettered logo design with a famous resurrected Major League Baseball team. Once the doctor had called in my prescription for Paxlovid hours earlier in the day, I pulled up to convenient drive-through window and requested my prescription from the pharmacist on duty. Red fl ag No. 1: With apologies, the pharmacist notifi ed me that they were out of the medication. Nothing in inventory. Red fl ag No. 2: She advised me that I would have to get my prescription at another of their retail pharmacy locations. Knowing how effi cient healthcare IT bills itself to be, I immediately asked the pharmacist to call the nearest retail pharmacy location to make sure they had enough inventory to fulfi ll my subscription. She agreed, checked all around and found the nearest location several miles away in a neighboring village with available stock. She also alerted them that I was heading over post-haste.


With appreciation, I headed to retail pharmacy No. 2. Apparently, this location only had one pharmacist on duty and a long line inside the store. When she returned to me at the drive-through window, she congenially remembered the telephone conversation and my case. Then she disappeared. A line started forming in the drive-through lane behind me. After 15 minutes, the pharmacist returned to the window and noticed the idle parade of cars behind me in the queue. She sheepishly asked if I would drive around the block so that she could take care of all the other customers. Red fl ag No. 3: When I fi nally returned, I learned what had happened. The pharmacist calmly shared with me that the insurance company (again, no names, but a primary color dominates its branding) already had processed the claim at the original retail pharmacy location … without knowing that the inventory levels at that location were depleted. When the new location tried to fi ll my prescription the insurance company wouldn’t cover it, so the pharmacist had to call the original location to fulfi ll the approved order. This took at least an hour spanning two drive-through retail pharmacy locations that should have known better because this retail pharmacy corporation routinely boasts about its supply chain and IT acumen at prominent trade shows and in a variety of media outlets. Wasn’t the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology supposed to solve all of this at least a decade earlier?


The rolling healthcare reform initiatives in the 1990s through the 2000s and through the 2010s were designed to ensure all of us were insured, retained our preferred clini- cians and could conveniently, safely and securely access our health records anywhere at any time because all the healthcare computers would be talking to one another in an interoperable cyberworld that sped information fl ow.


If the retail industry is any indicator, we’re apparently not there yet, despite the pomp, hype and circumstance. You’ve heard how they’re so much ahead of healthcare, but that’s not really the case.


We’re still in this together. We should work together to solve it once and for all. 4


Senior Editor Rick Dana Barlow can be reached at rickdanabarlow@wingfootmedia.biz. June 2023 • HEALTHCARE PURCHASING NEWS • hpnonline.com


PUBLISHER


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EDITORIAL Editor-in-Chief


Janette Wider jwider@hpnonline.com (941) 229-0484


Senior Editor Rick Dana Barlow rickdanabarlow@hpnonline.com


Senior Editor


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EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD


Jimmy Chung, MD, MBA, FACS, FABQAURP, CMRP, Chief Medical Offi cer, Advantus Health Partners and Bon Secours Mercy Health, Cincinnati, OH; Joe Colonna, Chief Supply Chain and Project Management Offi cer, Piedmont Healthcare, Atlanta, GA; Karen Conway, Vice President, Healthcare Value, GHX, Louisville, CO; Dee Donatelli, RN, CMRP, CVAHP, Vice President Of Professional Services, symplr, and Principal, Dee Donatelli Consulting, LLC, Overland Park, KS; Hudson Garrett Jr., PhD, FNAP, FSHEA, FIDSA, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Medicine, Infectious Diseases, University of Louisville School of Medicine; Melanie Miller, RN, CVAHP, CNOR, CSPDM, Value Analysis Consultant, Healthcare Value Management Experts Inc. (HVME) Los Angeles, CA; Dennis Orthman, Consulting, Braintree, MA; Janet Pate, Nurse Consultant and Educator, Ruhof Corp.; Richard Perrin, CEO, Active Innovations LLC, Annapolis, MD; Jean Sargent, CMRP, FAHRMM, FCS, Principal, Sargent Healthcare Strategies, Port Charlotte, FL; Richard W. Schule, MBA, BS, FAST, CST, FCS, CRCST, CHMMC, CIS, CHL, AGTS, Senior Director Enterprise Reprocessing, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH; Barbara Strain, MA, CVAHP, Principal, Barbara Strain Consulting LLC, Charlottesville, VA; Deborah Petretich Templeton, RPh, MHA,Chief Administrative Offi cer (Ret.), System Support Services, Geisinger Health, Danville, PA; Ray Taurasi, Principal, Healthcare CS Solutions, Washington, DC area


CORPORATE TEAM CEO Chris Ferrell | President June Griffi n


CFO Mark Zadell | COO Patrick Rains | CRO Reggie Lawrence Chief Digital Offi cer Jacquie Niemiec


Chief Administrative and Legal Offi cer Tracy Kane EVP (Medical & Healthcare Technology) Amy Mularski


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