Since most of the pharmacists at the central-fill facility have worked in Publix stores, they understand the importance of teamwork during emergencies, Burke said. “We were able to pull a Saturday crew in and redirect their focus as the hurricane threatened. Even if the stores were closed, we did the functions so the stores could open. We were doing workload balancing, data entry, and managing all of the things a pharmacy would manage,” he said.
Central pharmacy also supports pharmacies that provide “Meds to Beds” prescription delivery, including outpatient pharmacies that are branded as Publix and are operated on-site in hospitals. Publix collaborates with several health systems to provide the service that delivers prescriptions to patients before they are discharged from the hospital.
“The associates here are doing as much of the work as they can to streamline those prescriptions so they’re filled as quickly as possible, getting them queued up and then taking them to the patient’s room, and putting them in their hands before they leave the hospital. The turnaround is about 45 minutes from the time they get the discharge prescriptions to the patients’ bedside,” Petti said.
Publix’s central-fill operation also supports its pharmacy acquisitions. “That is such a hectic time with patients and the pharmacy. We help to smooth things over to make that the best experience we can for the patient when they come in,” Burke said.
If that were not enough, the central-fill operation also has a manual-fill section for high-cost branded drugs that might not be prescribed as often, and thus not stocked in Publix stores.
“Every night, even though we are closing out, someone will fill those 10 or 15 scripts to make sure those medications hit the stores,” Burke said. “The pharmacists who work here in central fill know how important it is if someone comes into a store and they don’t have a drug. We have a big responsibility to make the extra effort to ensure those drugs get there.”
The central fill facility, which uses the same drug vials and labeling as its retail stores to maintain consistency for patients, is always looking for new ways to improve the patient experience. Within the next 18 months, Publix plans to add additional robots, as well as collation robots, which will be able to place several bottles in one bag. “By adding collation, it opens up extra sortation spots for us as well,” Petti said “The collation robots have a multipurpose: to improve customer experience, improve customer experience for our retail teams, and to help us expand capacity without having to break out the walls. Additionally, by making these enhancements, it will enable us to increase the number of scripts filled to over 50% of the total volume.”
This move also is beneficial in that Publix provides certain drugs for free and offers “next best thing to free,” which is a 90-day supply on 28 NDCs for $7.50, Petti said. “We move through those drugs very quickly. We are replenishing the 2-liter canisters all the time. The new robots have an 8-liter canister, which will help remove the number of trips we have to take to replenish those canisters for fast-moving drugs.”
Besides cost-savings efficiencies, Toan Do, director of retail pharmacy operations, believes that one of the greatest advantages of Publix’s central-
fill operations is that it frees up pharmacists so they can play a greater clinical role.
“In the retail environment, the associates are leveraging the capacity of central pharmacy because it allows them more time to engage with patients,” Do said. “When the pharmacist is providing immunizations, such as the flu shot, it takes time away from verifying prescriptions. When central fill can verify and send the prescription back, ready to be sold, that provides more time to our teams to engage with the customer in a way that is more meaningful and impactful from a service standpoint.”
Petti noted that the future holds potential for Publix to bring central-fill capabilities to other states. “Our goal is to provide premier care to our patients every day,” she said, noting that Publix plans to expand central fill in some capacity to support its stores in Georgia next year. “By having this type of innovation in place, our pharmacists are more capable of providing that premier engagement each and every time.”