When Chris Cornelison, owner of Mississippi-based Iuka Discount Drugs, asked his staff if their Fillmaster Auto made compounding and reconstitution easier, the response was a resounding: “Oh, yeah!”
“Before Fillmaster, my staff would need to distill filtered water by hand, which meant finding extra water bottles, cleaning graduated cylinders, and measuring the precise amount of filtered water,” Chris Cornelison explained. “We lost physical workspace, and the time-consuming process killed our productivity.”
The staff at Iuka Discount Drugs would cross their fingers, hoping that no one spilled the water or made a human error; otherwise, the process would start all over again.
Mr. Cornelison knew there had to be a better way to reconstitute liquid medications.
“All of those headaches are gone thanks to Fillmaster. Right out of the box, Fillmaster changed how we dispensed medications,” he said. “Now our team doesn’t waste time measuring filtered water or reviewing medication labels because Fillmaster saves the reconstitution data.”
According to Mr. Cornelison, his team simply scans a barcode, and Fillmaster automatically adds the precise amount of filtered water, then adds the patient’s desired medicine flavoring.
“Fillmaster made the flavoring process easier because in the old days we’d have to pull out flavor cards, draw the flavor out in syringes, and get messy,” Mr. Cornelison said. “Fillmaster fully automates flavoring which makes the flavoring and reconstitution workflow so fast.”
In addition to cleaner workspaces, Mr. Cornelison said his team’s improved efficiency had a dramatic impact on the pharmacy’s bottom line. “Fillmaster lowered our resource costs and made dispensing liquid medications faster and more pleasurable for our team,” he said.
Mr. Cornelison was able to pass along the savings to customers. “It became worthwhile for us to offer [medicine] flavoring for free,” he said.
At one point, Iuka Discount Drugs upsold medicine flavoring, using the profits to offset the high production cost of reconstituting liquid medications by hand. “Even when we charged three dollars per flavoring we still converted about 30% of our customers,” Mr. Cornelison said.
Now the independent pharmacy offers flavored medicine for free as a tool to promote stellar customer care.
“Fillmaster allowed us to eliminate cost as a barrier to medicine flavoring,” Mr. Cornelison said. “We know our customers love flavored medicine, so offering it for free is good for our long term business growth.”
Moreover, the reduction in man-hours empowered Mr. Cornelison’s staff to focus on customer relationships.
“We train every pharmacist, technician, and customer service rep to make the customer’s pharmacy experience fun and enjoyable,” Mr. Cornelison said. “Look, sometimes pharmacy visits aren’t fun, but if we can make their experience more enjoyable with flavoring, and reduce their wait times with Fillmaster, that’s a win.”
“We can make it better” is how Mr. Cornelison and his staff pitch flavored medicine to their customers, but that same language applies to their pharmacy’s culture. “We want the whole pharmacy experience to be better, and Fillmaster helps us to that,” he said.
Mr. Cornelison believes Fillmaster is the key to success and has a message for other community pharmacies,
“Your team is going to love [Fillmaster] because it will make their jobs easier and your customers will love it because flavoring makes medicine time easy and fun, he said. “Fillmaster is going to change your pharmacy for the better.”
