General Supervisor
CVS's retail pharmacy operations are functioning poorly and dissatisfying customers. Many customers are defecting as a result. A pharmacy service improvement team has documented the current prescription fulfillment process, its exception rates, and the problems generated by exceptions. The company must now decide how to change this process, and what information system changes to make in support of the redesigned process.
What changes do you recommend to CVS’s existing pharmacy fulfillment process? What IT changes, if any, are required to implement your changes?
The biggest change that I would make would be around the Drop off station. I think that more could be done if that position was manned full time. This would require another full time employee, but they would also be qualified to perform the data entry portion of the system. I think that their productivity would offset a lot of the customer service headaches. Instead of only determining what time the prescription was to be picked up, a set of questions could be asked to alleviate problems the PSI team had determined. One example would be determining if a prescription did not have any refills left. That data is available on each bottle when a prescription is issued and should be entered into a database upon issuance as well. So, when the customer presents their script initially, we could determine if we need to call the doctor about filling the script or if the patient needs to visit the doctor.
This would require some IT help as this would be new data to enter into the CVS database and new lookup info we would need available immediately. We would be expanding the needed data upon customer drop off times, so a new data entry portal or interface would also be needed. This infrastructure seems to already be in place, but would need to be adapted for the new needs identified above.
Another opportunity to increase customer ease would be to have an online option for refilling prescriptions.
What changes do you recommend to CVS’s existing pharmacy fulfillment process? What IT changes, if any, are required to implement your changes?
The biggest change that I would make would be around the Drop off station. I think that more could be done if that position was manned full time. This would require another full time employee, but they would also be qualified to perform the data entry portion of the system. I think that their productivity would offset a lot of the customer service headaches. Instead of only determining what time the prescription was to be picked up, a set of questions could be asked to alleviate problems the PSI team had determined. One example would be determining if a prescription did not have any refills left. That data is available on each bottle when a prescription is issued and should be entered into a database upon issuance as well. So, when the customer presents their script initially, we could determine if we need to call the doctor about filling the script or if the patient needs to visit the doctor.
This would require some IT help as this would be new data to enter into the CVS database and new lookup info we would need available immediately. We would be expanding the needed data upon customer drop off times, so a new data entry portal or interface would also be needed. This infrastructure seems to already be in place, but would need to be adapted for the new needs identified above.
Another opportunity to increase customer ease would be to have an online option for refilling prescriptions.