RxAlly offers powerful performance network
For decades, community pharmacy has waged a tireless campaign to gain recognition as an equal partner on the nation’s healthcare delivery team, and support for the role pharmacists can play as front-line patient care advocates. That campaign has become increasingly urgent as hospital and primary care costs go through the roof, payers seek lower-cost healthcare solutions and health reform shifts the focus from traditional modes of fee-for-service payment to a reimbursement system that rewards successful patient outcomes.
Pharmacists win that recognition every day within their communities as they provide accessible care and counseling for patients, and extend the framework of care initiated by family physicians, specialists or hospitals. But when more than 22,000 individual pharmacies band together to promote cost-effective, pharmacy-based care, that’s a powerful movement.
Such is the case with RxAlly, a unique, nationwide network of pharmacies focused on delivering personalized care to patients, lowering health costs and working within an integrated network of community care. The RxAlly Performance Network has gained new adherents and growing acceptance by arming its members with new tools to extend patient care and new programs to link those member pharmacies with the broader healthcare network within their communities.
“With more than 22,000 member pharmacies nationwide, RxAlly has brought together the largest national network of pharmacies to improve health and lower costs,” said CEO and chairman Bruce Roberts.
Led by founding member Walgreens, the nation’s top drug chain, RxAlly also numbers among its members many of the nation’s top regional chains and independents. “The launch of RxAlly represents a unique combination of the strengths of community pharmacies with the corporate resources of Walgreens,” said Doug Hoey, CEO of the National Community Pharmacists Association. “Health problems, such as the proper use of medications and the worsening primary care shortage, cry out for new solutions.”
Among recent moves, RxAlly’s network has developed a new, federally qualified Medicare Prescription Drug Plan, SmartD Rx. The new plan will be offered by its member pharmacies to the nation’s 46 million Medicare beneficiaries beginning in January 2013.