Case Analysis

Pharmacy Service Improvement at CVS

Management Information Systems

Course Instructor: Prof. Amit Agrahari

Term III

Group 3

Khushboo Sharma ABM11027

Rohit Gupta FPM15012

Saurabh Agarwal PGP30276

Swagato Das Chaudhary PGP30419

Tanuj Lodhi PGP30420

January, 2015

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1. Introduction

Customer Value Store (CVS) is one of Americas largest retail drug stores with thousands of stores.

The revenue of the company exceeds $24.2 billion, over two third of which is generated by

pharmacies. Although the company is growing at market rate, on further analysis it has been found

that the churn out rate is very high. All CVC followed a five step process to fill prescriptions as

shown below.

Drop-off: In this first step the customer would deposit their script in the pharmacy and

specify a pick up time.

Data Entry: Patient, doctor, third party provider and prescription information was now

entered in a central databases

Production: The drugs to fill the script were counted and verified by certified pharmacy

technicians in the production area which was near the shelves where medicine was stored.

Quality Assurance: A pharmacist reviewed each script to make sure that it contained

exactly the right drugs in the right quantities and that all other details were correct.

Pickup: After Quality Assurance, each completed script was sealed in a bag. Bags were

stored in the pickup area. The technicians staffing the pickup window searched for the right

prescription among the bags, verified customers identities and took any required payments

from them.

Drop off Data Entry Production Quality Assuarnce Pick-up

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2. Key performance Indicators for CVS store

There are various performance indicators in an organization like qualitative, quantitative, input,

output & process indicators. Key Performance Indicators includes all the quantifiable measures

that are critical to the success of a business. KPI should be specific, measurable, realistic, and

aligned directly to the goal of the organization. KPI are importance because it Improve

accountability, provide information & alternatives for decision making and opportunities for

improvement.

Key performance indicators for CVS store:

1. Recognizing all the alerts for drug to drug interaction in Drug Utilization Review for Safety

of customers. Safety to be taken as a priority issue.

2. Customer waiting time: The time between arrival of customer and order placement should

be minimized. Pickup time to be minimized by ensuring flawless processing

3. Average number of prescriptions per member per year. Tracking of the number of

customers leaving/ joining per year to track the performance.

4. Quality assurance by ensuring that the drug dispense matches with the ones prescribed.

The customers to be informed in case of unavailability of the drugs instead of replacing the

product with other similar composition.

5. Drug utilization review savings per member per year

6. Customer satisfaction survey. This may help take in qualitative inputs in the form of

feedback and hence track performance subjectively

7. Total number of complaints associated with customers

8. Average time for complaint resolution

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3. Pharmacy Fulfilment Process (present)

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4. Recommended Changes

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Central Information System

The central information system shall enable a customer to login with a unique customer identity

and track the order status. It shall also provide information on the status of insurance and prices of

the products. This will reduce the customer waiting time and will eliminate activities that required

confirmation in case of disputes. The automation will allow customers to track the exact delivery

time and collect the order accordingly.

Online platform for order placement

Under this activity, the customer will be allowed to view all the information regarding the potential

order and place the order either online or at the help desk/ kiosk. This will allow the customer to

get informed about the prices, insurance status and the availability of medicines before placing the

order and hence eliminate problems arising due to unexpected bills and unforeseen denial of

delivery of the products.

Dispute Redressal mechanism

Installing a helpdesk at the pickup point may help direct dispute orders from the mainstream

delivery and payment path. This will help seamless processing of undisputed transactions and

hence save time of those customers who would otherwise be waiting to get the preceding

customers dispute resolved.

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5. Uniform Implementation

As CVS is a central repository, it should be considerably easy to make changes across all the stores.

Head of the stores may be informed by mail about the new process that they shall follow. Ensure

that the changes can be tracked on the centralized system by requiring constant updating.

Monitoring the Key Performance Indicators for CVS store:

Customer waiting time will get reduced

Patient Satisfaction Survey will get improve

Total number of complaints associated with patients will get reduced

Average time for complaint resolution will get reduced

Other options

Training Proper training should be given to the employees about the new process and

make them feel that new process is much better than the old one.

Customers Guide An employee will be available to help out the customer to use the

Kiosk Machine.

A handbook/ booklet about the new processes and the ongoing changes in the organizations

may be provided to keep the customers informed.

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6. Enterprise IT capabilities

Enterprise IT capabilities specifies business processes that are implemented top to bottom level

and are mandatory to use. Following are the IT capabilities that can be leverage here:

- Use of ERP integration systems with drug suppliers and inventory would help to monitor

and control shortage of supply.

- A system can be used to decide on the basis of any optimization model to minimize the

customer waiting time.

- A real time IT system can be implemented to monitor the flow of script over various

processes. It will also provide a summary of issues encountered in the script.

- A system can be provide to automate SMS updates to customers regarding order status and

to communicate change in delivery time if any.

- Using IT system to correctly predict the filling time required for a script using basis of

order load and script nature. With this prediction pick time will be decided.

- Event efficiency can be monitored by using various software by knowing real time

information like how many prescriptions are filled every day at each location.