Pharmacy management systems play an important role in medical claims management, drug dispensing, and patient medication adherence. Pharmacies, whether retail, clinical or independent, use these tools to optimize operational efficiency, reduce costs, compliance risks, and errors, and leverage actionable data points.
If you are planning to start a new pharmacy or revamp your existing pharmacy, pharmacy management software can help streamline several tasks. Pharmacy management software comes packed with several functionalities and features, but some core capabilities and functions are a must-have for the successful management of pharmacies.
What is a pharmacy management system?
The estimated market size of pharmacies and drug stores in the United States was $318 billion in 2020. Pharmacy management software enables efficient management of this ever growing sector. Pharmacy management systems, also known as pharmacy software, simplify the process of medication dispensing, management of inventory, and sales-related processes. They can also be customized to address specific requirements of businesses and eradicate complexities.
What are their main benefits?
There are numerous benefits of pharmacy software. Some of the main benefits include:
- Complete Business Operations Manage
- Faster and accurate prescription processing
- Reduced paperwork
- Greater customer retention
- MR commission management
- Patient’s History Management
Must-have features of a good pharmacy management system
For holistic development of a pharmacy and increased revenue generation and streamlined processes, a pharmacy management software should have the following core features:
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Reporting
Proper reporting and data analysis can help pharmacies make better-informed business decisions.
Pharmacies interact with multiple people, including – patients, doctors, sales executives, medical representatives. Remembering all their details manually is simply not possible. Pharmacy management systems store data regarding each of these and use it for later analysis. These reports can be used for:
- Determining growth strategies.
- Knowing which parts are doing well and which parts need improvement.
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Seamless Integration
The software solution you choose should be able to integrate with your existing solutions seamlessly. This way, you will be able to navigate easily all the challenges associated with dispensing medication, managing inventory, monitoring your business’s financial performance, and a lot more.
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Compliant with regulatory bodies
The pharmacy management software you choose for your business must comply with HIPAA and other regulatory bodies.
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Prescription Management
Prescriptions are hard to read and understand by the patients, which can lead to confusion. This confusion often leads to errors in getting the correct medication and treatment. E-prescriptions are user-friendly and eliminate the risk of errors due to confusion.
They also make things easier for the pharmacists as they can store the record of the prescription and refer to it later, whenever required.
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Re-order management
A pharmacy management system also speeds up dispensing of medicines as the software easily manages refills and allows doctors to send the new refills directly into the pharmacy management system.
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SMS and notification
With a good Pharmacy Management System, the pharmacist can get timely notifications and alerts. It sends alerts to the pharmacists when any of the patients need a particular medicine. The pharmacist can then schedule SMSes to be sent to those patients intimating them in advance to buy the next dosage of medicine.
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User Management Module
It is a very important feature that allows restricted access to various users. Access to different features can be restricted to users using a pharmacy management system, which makes management a lot easier.
For example, administrator users can control the buying and selling process, view the stocks, and list the medicines. In comparison, administrator authentication users can view processes, such as – transactions, selling reports, etc.
Wrap Up
Many pharmacy management systems come with additional features for offering exceptional assistance to the users. But what features your business needs the most should be the main deciding factor when choosing a management software for your pharmacy.
