By PCCA

It almost goes without saying: Talking to prescribers about customized medication can be difficult. It may take a lot of work just to get in front of a practitioner to discuss compounding, and then you can still encounter more obstacles, depending on whether they are familiar with it, what preconceived notions they may have about it, whether they’ve written a prescription for a compounded medication, or whether they’re already sending their patients to another compounding pharmacy down the street. In this last situation, you find yourself competing with another community pharmacy, and the issue of pricing may come up.

Fortunately, even if you have a competitor who is undercutting your prices, you have an advantage: quality. But if you want to help your pharmacy stand out in a competitive field, it’s not enough to just say that you have quality products. Here are five ways that you can translate your investment in quality into your competitive advantage:
 

1. Be specific about the strengths of your pharmacy’s compounding, including quality measures, training and years of experience.

Making customized medicine is not the same as dispensing manufactured drug products, so it’s important to inform practitioners of the steps you take to ensure that you produce medication according to rigorous standards. Talk about the quality assurance and quality control processes in place at your pharmacy. You may also want talk about the training you or your staff have completed as well as any special professional achievements or certifications. You could even talk about your and your compounding staff’s collective years of experience in the field. These are all examples of your pharmacy’s dedication to making sure that their patients get the best outcomes from their customized medicine.  

2. Invite prescribers to tour your pharmacy.

If possible, you can also invite practitioners to visit the pharmacy and take a tour of your lab. This turns your business from an abstract idea into a physical space they can experience and remember. After all, it’s one thing to tell them about it, but it’s another thing to actually show them.

3. Talk about PCCA to highlight how our high standards go into your customized medications.

Just as you would talk about the care and attention to detail you put into every compound that comes out of your pharmacy, so you can also talk about the high standard of ingredients that went into them. Like we said, compounds are not the same as commercially manufactured drug products. If a brand-name drug works, people tend to assume that a generic will perform comparably. In compounding, however, everything from the active ingredients and the base to the formula, the compounding process and the lab equipment can affect the final preparation. So it’s not as simple as viewing compounds as necessarily comparable to each other.

When discussing compounding options with prescribers, therefore, you should also mention that you purchase your ingredients from a trusted source that has been at the heart of pharmacy compounding for over 35 years. This is because, when you purchase products from PCCA, the ingredients you use in the customized medications that you compound meet The PCCA Standard™, our commitment to going above and beyond what is required every day to reduce risk in pharmacy compounding. 

4. Use thepccastandard.com to familiarize yourself with our quality processes, and encourage prescribers to visit the website, too.

We know that our quality processes are a lot to talk about with a prescriber. Fortunately, we’ve developed a resource to help you share why PCCA ingredients can make a difference in your compounds. At thepccastandard.com, you can see how we work with manufacturers to find the best chemicals, and how we verify and evaluate those chemicals once we receive them. You can also learn about how we develop and produce bases as well as all the effort we put into PCCA formulas to make sure they meet the needs of the industry. If the prescriber wants to learn more about the ingredients you work with, encourage them to visit thepccastandard.com as well, where they’ll be able to see that you care about everything that goes into the customized medications you make for their patients. 

5. (PCCA Members only) Visit the Marketing Resources webpage and download our new handout for practitioners.

You may already leave your business card and literature that you have about your pharmacy, your products or your services when you’re done visiting prescribers’ offices. This is a good way to make your discussion more memorable by giving them something to refer back to later. But PCCA members also have access to a number of professionally produced marketing tools on the Marketing Resources page, which we update quarterly. One of the newest additions to this page is a postcard that members can print and give to practitioners. It highlights that you use the highest quality ingredients in the compounds you make for your prescribers’ patients, and it encourages them to visit thepccastandard.com to learn more.

Approaching prescribers to discuss customized medication is an important step in growing your business and especially in helping patients get the medicine they need. Whether you are informing a practitioner about what pharmacy compounding is, having a discussion about why they should work with you or even justifying your prices, it can be beneficial to assure them that you compound high-quality medications by being specific about your practices and ingredients. We hope the five tips above will help you do just that.