After a UCI Health pharmacy pilot exceeded its goal $1.1 million in gross margin by an additional $300,000, the Orange, Calif.-based system approved a $30 million expansion of the project.
Melanie Joe, PharmD, chief pharmacy officer at UCI Health, a six-hospital system, told Becker’s the effort began with building a business case for adding two full-time employees to the medication management team.
In 2023, a pharmacy team analyzed the number of prescriptions written at UCI Health’s specialty care clinics and subsequently filled by the system. The capture rate for those prescriptions was low — about 33%.
The team identified specialty clinics that lacked pharmacy staff and calculated the potential revenue gains of hiring a pharmacist and a pharmacy technician at those locations.
“We wanted to take this further right than just, ‘Hey, I’m going to go over there and try to capture some prescriptions,'” Dr. Joe said. Instead, the pilot aimed to establish a formal medication management clinic.
The pilot focused on dermatology, a lucrative market. The team estimated the initiative could boost gross margin by $1.1 million if prescription volume improved.
Within a year, the added pharmacist and pharmacy technician achieved $1.4 million in gross margin. Based on that success, UCI Health is planning a $30 million project, dubbed the “Medication Management Accelerator,” to expand its ambulatory pharmacy outreach with a focus on specialty pharmacy.
A component of the initiative will involve identifying prescriptions eligible for the federal 340B drug discount program that are not currently being processed through it, Dr. Joe said. This idea originated during the pilot after the dermatology clinic-assigned pharmacist discovered such a case — the source of the extra $300,000 in gross margin.
“We are really trying to marry the work of the pharmacist with the outcomes,” Dr. Joe said. “You have to be able to have information that is truly important for different people. So if it’s the financial piece, you can show the benefits from a financial perspective. If it’s a clinical thing, you also want to be able to show outcomes and how these pharmacists are impacting the organization and our patients.”
