Medication Synchronization, commonly known as Med Sync, is a service that allows patients to pick up all their chronic medications at the same time each month. Med Sync not only improves patient adherence but also offers significant financial benefits for pharmacies. When we view Med Sync from a financial perspective, we look at it in different layers. The first being some of the more obvious benefits (increased prescription volume, gross margin, etc.), the second layer we start looking at labor balancing and cash flow management. Today we will focus primarily on the first layer of Med Sync, financial benefits.
There are many different strategies and services available to help you implement and enhance your med sync program. Below we will try to offer assistance in how to quickly quantify and enhance the financial benefits to your pharmacy through increased prescription refills, gross margin dollars and potential employee incentives.
Increased Prescription Refills
It is crucial to address the challenges posed by aggressive reimbursement issues facing retail pharmacies today. Enhancing the likelihood of filling profitable prescriptions has become more important than ever. Increasing the volume of prescriptions filled leads to greater revenue, thereby providing more opportunities to improve gross margins.
No matter your geographic location, you can always maximize the patient population you currently have access to. Let’s break down how to determine the potential profitability of a robust med sync program.
First, we need to calculate how many prescriptions on average our unique patients get filled per month. Scripts / unique patient / month is a very simple metric that gives you an accurate feel for how adherent your patient population is. This will be our baseline number to calculate the financial benefits we are seeing from our newly implemented or enhanced med sync program.
Scripts per Unique Patient per Month
Next, we’re going to calculate our Monthly Gross Margin (GM). Note, for your GM/Script, you can choose to incorporate your wholesaler rebates into this number OR not, but you need to be consistent when monitoring the ongoing progress of your program.
Monthly Gross Margin
Using recent Outcomes Index data, let’s run through an example to show the financial impact of our program.
As mentioned above, the key metric to track here is [Scripts / Unique Pt / Month]. Once we have that, we will know our baseline adherence performance and then can quickly calculate the lift in gross margin we see on our Med Sync program.
(Outcomes Index Monthly Data as of January 2025)
Based on our calculation of 3.5 scripts / unique patient / month, it appears that while our pharmacy is certainly working on keeping patients adherent, there is room for improvement. A pharmacy with a very high performing Med Sync program, with extra focus on adherence and keeping patients compliant on their medication, is usually approaching 5 scripts / unique pt / month.
**Med Sync Program is Implemented** 
Let’s target something lower to start. In the Outcomes Index example above, if the pharmacy can achieve even a 0.5 script monthly increase per patient, that translates to significant dollars. Assuming an average GM/Script of $11.95, as seen below, the increase in GM is significant.
Monthly Increased Gross Margin Dollars
Annualized Increased Gross Margin Dollars
As you can see, even a moderate enhancement in patient adherence with no additional patient growth translates to a large increase in Gross Margin dollars for your store. Keep in mind, this is only prescription dollars. As you are keeping in routine contact with your patients, the opportunities for increased revenue are endless. Outcomes paid over $150M in clinical intervention payments to pharmacies in 2024. Make sure you are capturing all available dollars by maximizing every patient interaction. Combining Med Sync with available CMR and TIP opportunities within the Outcomes platform is a win-win.
Get the Team Onboard - Employee and Staff Incentives
Typically, one of the largest hurdles to clear in successfully initiating, and maintaining, a med sync program is staff buy in. Everyone will have good intentions to implement once the plan is established, then people get busy and the first thing to get deprioritized is the “new thing”.
What we have seen working in practice is establishing an employee incentive program, and an incentive that is monetary. Below is a graph that illustrates the realistic success you can achieve financially by implementing a Med Sync program, as well as a financial incentive for your staff – in this example we used 20%.
Labor Balancing & Cash Flow
There is another level of Med Sync benefits that can be just as valuable financially to your pharmacy but are not as easy to calculate. The first being staffing, or Labor Balancing. Once your program is up and running, you can easily manage the times and days when you need additional staff. Generally, our two largest costs to run our pharmacy are staffing and inventory. Efficient management of both is critical. Being able to fill a large percentage of your chronic medications and high dollar prescriptions in 2-3 days a week in a controlled environment can lead to huge efficiencies in staffing and inventory management.
Additionally, this helps with Cash Flow. When looking at your payer contracts, usually you are not reimbursed for medication you dispense any earlier than 14 days after adjudication. Depending on when adjudication occurs during the payment cycle, and which payer, payment may not come for up to one month. This is where it is critical to manage your inventory and implement practices such as just-in-time ordering.
We will cover these benefits and examine improvements in the pharmacy experience from a patient's perspective in future articles.
Med Sync is Critical to Financial Viability
In a time of unbelievably aggressive PBM reimbursement, staffing issues, and countless financial burdens, make sure you are controlling what you can control. We discussed only the direct financial benefit related specifically to prescription drug dispensing. There are untold number of additional ancillary benefits to a Med Sync program that you have heard before – upsell opportunities, vaccine awareness, OTC sales, staff efficiency, inventory management, etc. Med Sync used to be an optional service, but for many pharmacies it is now a mainstay of their business model from both a financial and patient care perspective. A “healthy” pharmacy will ensure you and your staff can continue to serve your community for years to come.
