Duane Reade sticks to the ‘script’ to recharge Rx

NEW YORK —Duane Reade’s new mantra—“New York living made easy”—isn’t just about being a destination point for convenience items; it is also about making life easy for pharmacy patients and improving the health of New Yorkers.

“When we took a look at our pharmacy, we said, ‘How are we going to make New York living easier for New Yorkers in our pharmacy department?’” Frank Scorpiniti, SVP pharmacy operations, told Drug Store News.

Scorpiniti, a former Longs Drug Store executive, joined Duane Reade in December.

Now that John Lederer, chairman and CEO, has assembled his management team, the industry veterans have hit the ground running to not only improve the box and enhance the customer experience, but to also boost pharmacy.

Since joining the company, Scorpiniti has decided to close the chain’s central fill operation, which had been a part of the business for a number of years. His decision not only resulted in a cost reduction for the company but also better in-stocks for stores and less wait time for pharmacy customers.

In early June, the company shuttered its two Diabetes Resource Centers located in Manhattan and Brooklyn, and has refocused that diabetes knowledge across all of its pharmacy locations.

These one-stop shops, which debuted in Manhattan in early February 2007, offered a full range of services and educational training to help promote long-term good health. The program was managed and taught by licensed pharmacists and certified diabetes educators, and consisted of educational classes, scheduled appointments and walk-in services.

“The Diabetes Resource Center was certainly a good program for us, but we decided to discontinue that and invest our efforts into making the overall pharmacy experience across our network of stores better. The pharmacists today are so well-versed in diabetes care that we felt it would make a lot of sense that that knowledge was in the 250 stores that interact with our patients on a day-to-day basis,” Scorpiniti said.

Retail-based clinics continue to be an important healthcare offering and, within the next few months, the company will be opening up two new clinics—one in Midtown East and one in the new Herald Square store—bringing the number of facilities in operation to four. Duane Reade is teamed up with Consumer Health Services to offer the physician-staffed clinics, dubbed DR Walk-in Medical Care.

The company also is reorganizing the management team within its pharmacy operation and is building a field management team that gives pharmacy district managers oversight over fewer stores.

“That is the key—that we are going to narrow the scope of their oversight so they can focus on customer satisfaction, hiring and retaining the best pharmacists in New York to serve our customers, and training our pharmacists on the new technology we are rolling out in our stores,” said Scorpiniti.

The new technology includes a new pharmacy phone system that will be rolled out by year-end to enhance patient and physician interaction with pharmacists, a new automatic refill program and a new pharmacy system. Scorpiniti said it is still evaluating pharmacy systems and will “soon” make a decision.

To help better serve those patients who have trouble communicating in English, the company introduced several months ago a telephone-like system that connects pharmacy patients with a translator to translate up to 170 different languages. Meanwhile, a software solution can translate prescription labels in up to 14 different languages.