The Virtual Toolbox — NCPA

The National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) represents the more than 80,000 small, privately held pharmacies. These are the stores that evoke images of Norman Rockwell and personal service. And they were in trouble.

Increased volume and decreased profits meant they were now in the administration and tech support business, not community pharmacy. Fortunately, the NCPA had received a large “starter grant” from a major pharmaceutical company and The National Association of Chain Drug Stores (NACDS).

Our challenge was to build a “virtual toolbox of services” in time for the Board of Director’s meeting next quarter.

The 8020 Approach

Our mapping revealed community pharmacists spent a great deal of time training and documenting pharmacy technicians without the deep training and support budgets of the big chains, faced significant reporting duties for pharmacy workflow but lacked the Legal Departments of larger pharmacies to craft compliance documents and were professionally and creatively isolated.

We needed to help them get back to what they loved: working with patients.

The 8020 Solution

Because of the role of The National Association of Chain Drug Stores, we had access to their legal teams, and worked with them to create a set of online, members-only tools that included Print on Demand – boiler-plate language for training and compliance manuals ( customized by the community pharmacy to suit his/her business practices and state, federal and insurance obligations), Distance Learning Modules and an “electronic bulletin board” to connect community pharmacists from all 50 states.

NCPA took advantage of our Client Advocacy search services and worked with an outstanding agency that built upon this framework and delivered a prototype in time for the meeting. It proved so successful, three chain drug store CEO’s came up with metaphoric checkbooks in hand and said “how much more do you need?”

Quick Facts:

Client: National Community Pharmacists Association and The National Association of Chain Drug Stores
Industries:Pharmaceutical, Trade Association
Departments Served: Professional Affiars, Member Relations

Next Steps:

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