3 Tools to Enhance Your Pharmacy’s Shipping Capabilities

3 Tools to Enhance Your Pharmacy’s Shipping Capabilities

Posted on Mar 22, 2024

Whether you operate as a mail-order pharmacy, support long-term care facilities, or offer prescription and OTC deliveries, it’s important to automate as much of your shipping process as possible. Otherwise, you’ll wind up spending your day logging into carrier portals, manually initiating shipments, and fielding calls from patients looking for delivery updates. That’s why BestRx offers a variety of features and integrations to help streamline shipping activity for pharmacies, including:

Multiple Shipping and Third-Party Delivery Integrations

BestRx has integrations with each major shipping provider: FedEx, UPS, and EasyPost (USPS). Once enabled, pharmacies can link each of their existing account(s) to BestRx and perform delivery-related activities, right from their pharmacy software, including:

    • Electronically sync patient names and addresses to the selected carrier.
    • Quickly generate shipping labels.
    • Easily obtain tracking numbers and the delivery status.
    • Viewing patient signatures (FedEx and UPS) or proof of delivery (EasyPost/USPS).
    • Generating shipping reports, which can be filtered by a specific date range, provider, or order number.

BestRx also offers delivery integrations with AmeriShip, iOmni, ScriptDrop, and United Delivery Service. That way all your shipping needs are covered, whether you’re scheduling nationwide shipments in advance or need same-day services through a local courier. Regardless of the provider chosen, BestRx pharmacies can quickly initiate a new shipment, add a contact name and delivery instructions in just a few clicks. 

A Shipping Rate Comparison Tool

When pharmacies utilize multiple shipping providers, it’s not always easy to know which carrier has the best rate for each delivery. To check, pharmacies must initiate the shipment with each provider to obtain pricing. This can quickly become time-consuming, which is why most pharmacies resort to guessing. Instead, pharmacies can use a shipping tool in BestRx that compares the rates for all selected providers, in one convenient spot. Here’s how it works:

      • When creating a new shipment, pharmacies can access the rate comparison tool using the Providers dropdown menu. Next, the pharmacy selects the prescription(s) they’d like to ship and click ‘Get Rates from All Providers’.
      • Then, a new window will appear where the pharmacy can indicate which providers they want to view rates for and the shipping options they are considering (same day, next day, 2-day air, etc.). Once their selections have been made, the pharmacy simply needs to click the green ‘Get All Rates” button. This prompts the system to populate the rates for each carrier and shipping option at the bottom of the screen.
      • To move forward with the shipment, the pharmacy just needs to pick the best option and confirm their selection.

This simple comparison tool ensures the pharmacy is always using the quickest, most cost-effective shipping provider. 

Electronic Delivery Notifications & Remote Payment Options

Pharmacies can keep their patients informed about their prescriptions – without spending time on the phone. Instead, pharmacies can use the BestRx Messaging Interface to quickly send email and text alerts to patients. This includes shipment notifications and tracking information. In fact, delivery alerts can be set up to go out automatically once a tracking number has been assigned in BestRx. This way, patients can easily track their delivery at any time.

Outside of tracking their order, most patients who opt for deliveries prefer to submit their payment remotely as well. That’s why our point-of-sale system, BestPOS includes a convenient text-to-pay option, enabling patients to pay for their prescriptions and over-the-counter purchases online. To initiate a remote payment, pharmacies just need to select “Request Online Payment” when ringing up a transaction. This prompts the system to send a text message to the patient that contains a secure link they can use to review their order and enter their payment information. After the payment has been submitted, the order status will be automatically updated in BestRx as well.

Both of these automated features are designed to increase patient satisfaction for prescription and OTC deliveries, while simplifying things for your pharmacy.

If your pharmacy offers delivery options, make sure they’re beneficial – both for patients and your business. As with any process, it’s important to ensure you’re managing your shipments as efficiently and profitably as possible. Request a free demo to learn more about the integrations and tools BestRx offers that can help!