3 Reasons your Outpatient Pharmacy POS System Needs to be Flexible

Effecting change in any pharmacy is very rarely easy.  The reasons vary from pharmacy to pharmacy.  Bad habits are hard to break, money is difficult to justify spending, time is impossible to find, or there’s just a good old fashioned hesitance to leave the comfort zone to try something new and different. 

But there are other reasons that pharmacies can’t make changes.  Especially when it comes to hospital outpatient pharmacies that are part of incredibly large organizations.  If you’re a part of one of these organizations, you’ve likely seen this have an impact at one point or another.  No matter what direction you want the outpatient pharmacy to go in, you may be restricted by institution wide policies, procedures, and preferred vendors.  And when they do decide to make a change, you may be one of the last to know.

The one area where you may have a little more control is in selection of your Pharmacy POS system.  Because these needs are unique to outpatient pharmacies, you may have a little more leeway in the selection process.  However, you still have to keep other strict organizational requirements in mind.  Any POS vendor you choose to work with has to be flexible in a number of ways.  That’s where RMS comes in.  Here are just a few of the ways where we’ve seen our flexibility benefit our hospital outpatient pharmacy customers.

Pharmacy System Vendor: It may not be a regular occurrence, but we have seen many major institutional customers go through the process of changing their pharmacy system vendor, and when the organization moves, the outpatient pharmacy will eventually have to move along with it.  So don’t make your pharmacy POS decision based solely on the needs of today’s businesses relationships.  Make sure that the provider you choose can accommodate potential future needs.  Even though you don’t know what the future holds, because RMS has interfaces with over 25 different pharmacy system vendors, including hospital systems from Epic, McKesson, and RX30 to name a few, it’s a safe bet that we can work with you to accommodate your future interface needs.

Credit Card Processor: Independent pharmacies receive offers from credit card processors all the time, and they have the choice to change if they want to.  Most institutional pharmacies prefer, or must, stay with the processor that their organization has chosen.  Going in a different direction may be next to impossible. (And certainly more paperwork than you’d like to deal with). Your POS provider shouldn’t dictate which credit card processing company you use, but instead should work with you to find a solution that both your outpatient pharmacy and your organization can live with.

Scalability:  The institutional pharmacy market is growing.  This means your organization may be growing right along with it. Whether you’re adding front end product for the first time, adding locations, or implementing a meds-to-beds program, your outpatient pharmacy POS system needs to be able to grow right along with you.  Check out our full suite of products to see just how scalable the RMS system can be.

Instead of scrambling to fit a square peg into a round hole, partner with companies who can adapt to suit your needs.  It may not seem like a big deal at the start, but long term it will pay to work with a POS provider like RMS who can be flexible when you can’t be.