In the past year and a half, independent pharmacies have stepped up to the plate to keep their communities safe.

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Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, pharmacists have been on the frontlines offering tests, treatments, and now vaccines to protect the people in their own backyards. When vaccines became available at the beginning of the year, pharmacies saw an influx of new patients 一 and the rush hasn’t stopped since.

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Now, at the end of the year, pharmacists continue to offer COVID-19 vaccines while also preparing for COVID-boosters, flu shots, and other routine vaccines.

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More vaccines mean more opportunities for pharmacies, but they also mean more challenges in terms of meeting demand. With so many patients, it can be difficult to properly schedule and manage appointments, leading to problems with workflow and overall productivity.

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A New Tool in Your Toolbox

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Luckily, a new tool from RxLocal can give pharmacies the ability to treat more patients, more efficiently.

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Our Vaccine Scheduler is designed to help you manage, monitor, and track upcoming vaccine appointments so that you can adjust your workflow accordingly and make sure your patients get the services they need.

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The process is easy. First, set up a profile on RxLocal’s Pharmacy Finder. Not only will setting up your profile help you to get noticed by patients in your area, but it will also give those patients the option to schedule a vaccine appointment with you 一 all from within the RxLocal app.

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Once a patient schedules an appointment, that information will be tracked for you on a web-based calendar within the Pharmacy Finder.

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With all of your appointments in one place, you can decide how to allocate your time and resources.

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As an added bonus, you can prompt the Vaccine Scheduler to send patients automatic reminders, which will help ensure that they show up to their appointments and show up on time.

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And, if you have multiple vaccination sites to manage, you can use the Vaccine Scheduler at each site, keeping track of each of your patients.

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To access the Vaccine Scheduler and start managing your appointments more effectively, read our step-by-step instruction guide.

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The Key to Scheduling

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Ed Hudon, owner of The Medicine Shoppe Pharmacy in Boyertown, Pennsylvania, has seen the benefits of the Vaccine Scheduler firsthand.

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Ed and his wife, Terry, have been serving the Boyertown area for nearly 27 years, providing the value-based care that independents are known for.

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At The Medicine Shoppe, Ed offers a variety of clinical services, but vaccines have been his most important in the last few months.

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With so many patients looking to get vaccinated, Ed needed a resource to help book, manage, and schedule his upcoming appointments; so he turned to the RxLocal Vaccine Scheduler.

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With this tool, Ed has been able to optimize his workflow and increase the number of patients that he can see every day.

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“The key to scheduling,” he says, “is knowing your workflow. It’s knowing how many vaccinations you can really, truly do on an hourly basis 一 depending on the staff that you have 一 without stretching yourself so thin that your other services are not up to the caliber you expect them to be. Then, it’s blocking out those times and using the right tools to fill them in.”

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For Ed, the right tool is the Vaccine Scheduler. The Vaccine Scheduler helps Ed find open spots in his schedule, accommodate his staff’s workflow, and administer more vaccines to his patients.

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And it goes beyond just vaccines.

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Ed explains, “I love that [the Vaccine Scheduler] is embedded right into RxLocal. It helps patients understand [the app], what it means, and how it works with our pharmacy system. When patients use the Vaccine Scheduler and set up an appointment, they can also see what other services we provide and get linked in with us in some way. So it’s a plus for the patient and a plus for us at the pharmacy.”

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The Vaccine Scheduler therefore not only has opportunities to expand vaccines, but to expand other clinical services and to grow your pharmacy as a whole.

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Conclusion

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The Vaccine Scheduler is just one of the many innovative solutions that RxLocal offers for your pharmacy. We believe that creativity, drive, and personalized care set independents apart 一 and it’s these things that will move us forward.

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As Ed says, “[Independent pharmacists] can communicate, we can advocate, and we can be creative. That’s just one of the many things that pharmacists are: creative. Not only are we creative, but we are embedded into our communities in such a way that we can move in any direction, and we can do it more effectively than the big-box chains. We can make important decisions and we can create close relationships that are impactful. But we have to think outside the box to do it.”

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With the right technology by your side, you can go beyond the box.

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