When it comes to specialty therapy, it’s vital for patients to receive their treatments reliably and consistently on-time. It could be the difference between a patient spending the weekend with family or being in the emergency room. There are a number of factors at play when it comes to determining whether medication shipments arrive punctually, and one of the major players in this formula is the delivery process.
What happens when a critical specialty medication delivery is delayed due to the weather? Even worse, when a natural disaster strikes and carrier systems are down, roads are blocked, and power is out?
These scenarios can wreak havoc on specialty pharmacies and the patients who rely on them for critical, potentially life-saving treatment. In addition to risking the lives of chronically ill patients, bad weather has led to tens of millions – even hundreds of millions of dollars – in financial losses for pharmacies, as temperature and time-sensitive treatments are delayed to the point of expiration.
While some specialty pharmacies face devastating losses for their patients and their business viability, others turn to advanced technology to help predict and prevent disasters from striking where it hurts the most.
That’s where parcel management software comes in.
How a Leading National Specialty Pharmacy Avoided Nearly $13.9 Million in Lost Revenue
This is the case for one of the country’s leading specialty pharmacies, which turned to ParcelShield for its parcel management and rescue logistics platform – and prevented the loss of $13.9 million in revenue after the devastating impact of Hurricane Irma in 2017. More importantly, the company’s patients received their critical specialty medications as quickly as possible in the storm’s aftermath.
When the company first engaged ParcelShield, it was experiencing the consequences of inefficient and unscalable manual processes. It delivered nearly 90,000 packages per month out of multiple locations across the U.S. but faced consistently high re-ship rates that led to mounting losses.
While the partnership brought immediate, long-term value, the pharmacy never could have predicted ParcelShield’s value in the wake of Hurricane Irma.
Thinking ahead and using ParcelShield’s technologies, the company was able to circumvent Irma-related delivery disruptions, and rescue those that were shipped prior to hurricane warnings, to the tune of 2,115 specialty medication parcels worth nearly $13.9 million. Parcels, revenue, and patient outcomes that otherwise would have been lost within the small, several day window of hurricane Irma.
The Growing Role of Technology in Specialty Pharmacy Parcel Management
As city infrastructures grow increasingly complex and online shopping becomes more prominent in daily life, global carriers like FedEx and UPS are investing more into sophisticated weather tracking technologies. In fact, FedEx has one of the largest meteorology departments in the shipping industry, with 15 members who are devoted to predicting the impact of weather on the company’s delivery efficiency.
However, for specialty pharmacies with critical cargo, these measures simply are not enough.
Dedicated parcel management and rescue logistics software brings personalized attention to each specialty pharmacy’s operations, ensuring that these valuable parcels aren’t lost among the billions of packages that major carriers deliver each year.
Many specialty pharmacies have discovered first-hand that dedicated parcel management simply isn’t optional when it comes to ensuring each patient’s highest quality of life, in addition to the pharmacy’s ability to operate effectively.
Read Their Story: Download the Case Study Today
To read more about how ParcelShield improved this leading specialty pharmacy’s internal operations and prevented disaster for the pharmacy’s patients – while protecting millions of dollars in the process, download our free client success story today!
