ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Diana joined PTS in fall of 2020 as their Product Marketing Specialist. Diana’s passionate about how storytelling and messaging create value-add, business changing content. She enjoys collaborating with her team to achieve results. When Diana’s not busy writing, she’s exploring the local forest trails near her home north of Toronto, Ontario.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robin brings 20+ years of experience in community pharmacy from both a corporate and independent setting. She's passionate about patient care and believes that investing in clientele and building relationships leads to patient retention and overall customer satisfaction. In Robin’s spare time, you’ll find her renovating her home and tending to her gardens. With any luck, the peonies she planted last fall will bloom!

Propel Rx has enhanced the Intake window to streamline data entry. As we return to in person industry events, we heard Propel Rx users weren’t taking advantage of some of the new and enhanced features in this window. Here are 3 things to START doing in the Intake window.

1. Start using the Profile button

Once a patient has been searched and selected, the Profile button becomes available. Prescriptions can be easily refilled or reauthorized. Attachments and notes are carried forward for reauthorized prescriptions and everything can be viewed in a single window.

2. Select Copy Rx to add another instance in the Intake window.

Two prescriptions can be processed together by selecting Copy Rx. This will allow another instance in the Intake window. Think of it as adding another page.

This is an alternative to the “/ ” method you might be using today. Give it a try!

3. Add prescriptions to Data Entry for later.

Ever start an intake prescription that you want to finish later or want someone else at another workstation to continue working on it? Start utilizing the Add to Workbench button to add it to the Data Entry queue.

The Intake window is your ticket to more efficient data entry. Explore more about the Intake window by visiting Propel Rx Online Help.

​​​ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robin brings 20+ years of experience in community pharmacy from both a corporate and independent setting. She's passionate about patient care and believes that investing in clientele and building relationships leads to patient retention and overall customer satisfaction. In Robin’s spare time, you’ll find her renovating her home and tending to her gardens. With any luck, the peonies she planted last fall will bloom!

Excitement has been building around the training required for Propel Rx. Trust me, we share your excitement! You’re already a PharmaClik Rx expert which will make learning Propel Rx easier than you think.

Allow me to walk you through what the learning journey leading up to Propel Rx will look like.

Keeping you updated

Getting ready for your upgrade to Propel Rx is made easy through a series of weekly countdown emails beginning four weeks prior to your upgrade, and ending just over a week after the upgrade. These weekly emails contain everything you need to ensure a smooth transition and an even smoother go live day. Remember to check your junk in case these emails end up there!

Enclosed in these emails is a toolkit containing all the critical information and a checklist that will keep you and your pharmacy team on task with the activities required during the four-week countdown.

Your eLearning journey

Your team will have four weeks to complete eLearning. With the help of the Retail Learning Academy (RLA), your pharmacy team will be able to learn about Propel Rx at their own pace, when it's convenient for them. Keep an eye out for your "Prepare for Propel Rx" email that outlines your four week journey. You'll also receive an additional email that will contain an RLA enrolment key, where you and your team can then view the assigned curriculum and enroll.

Self-directed learning is engaging and interactive and includes:

1. eLearning

2. Guided demos

3. Hands-on simulations

Flexible learning environment

The eLearning courses can be completed on various devices like a laptop, tablet, or a desktop computer. The course window will adapt to your chosen device, allowing more flexibility for your pharmacy team. If you’re unable to complete a course in one sitting, don't worry, it will remember where you left off, so you’re not required to start from the very beginning.

Completing the eLearning prior to being upgraded is mandatory and will ensure that you and your team are familiar with Propel Rx on your Go Live day. You’re already experts with PharmaClik Rx and navigating this new platform will become second nature to you in no time!

The PTS Learning Team hosts weekly live online "Ask us Anything" Q&A sessions. Get a chance to experience Propel Rx with an expert trainer to guide you the along the way. The sessions are designed to support your learning journey and are free to attend for as many times as you need. Drop in for 10 minutes to ask a question or stay for the hour. It's up to you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR - ZLATA ZOVKO, MANAGER, LEARNING

Zlata is curently the Learning Manager and has over 20 years of experience in the pharmacy industry.  Zlata is passionate about learning and believes that investing in learning leads to increased autonomy and ultimately more time to spend with patients.

Data Backup and Recovery and Cybersecurity are not interchangeable and do not offer the same protection, but together, they provide the stability and safety your business and customers deserve.

If you choose to have Data Backup and Recovery solutions (which safely secures your data in the Cloud), you can rest assured that if a disaster should occur like a flood, fire or theft, your data can be downloaded and restored within hours. But before you get too comfortable, let's take a closer look at the word theft. That's an interesting word as its definition has been evolving over the years. TThere's physical theft and then there's cyber theft (which continues to be on the rise).

Let's play out some scenarios.

You have Data Backup and Recovery back-up but didn't feel the need to invest in Cybersecurity. One day, a staff member receives an email from what appears to be a legitimate source and they open the email. Congratulations! You have now fallen victim to ransomware. The hacker encrypted all of your files and demands you pay a ransom. While a copy of your data is safely stored in the Cloud, another copy is in the hands of the hacker. What do you do? Do you pay to get your data back? What do you tell your patents? How do you know your information hasn't already been sold or shared with others? The possibilities are endless, and the outcomes are never good.

Sound dreary? It doesn't have to be.

Investing in Cybersecurity intercepts malicious attacks on your business and ultimately, your patients. Imagine that your pharmacy can't operate because of a cyber attack. Your customers could lose confidence and shop elsewhere.

You value cybersecurity and recognize its importance, but opted out of EVault backup solutions.

You recently took over the store and you have too much on the go right now. You'll get around to it when you have some spare time. (We know, you're chuckling right now. There's no such thing as a pharmacy having spare time.) You're so busy with the new store that you haven't heard about the string of robberies in the surrounding towns. In walks a customer, wearing a mask, but it's not a COVID mask - it's a robbery. In addition to the narcotics, you're demanded to hand over computers, which these days, are about 7" sq. and about 2.5lbs - easy target. The server is gone and the workstations won't function without the server. What do you do? You know you'll never see that server again. How are you going to refill prescriptions or look up a patient record? Everything is gone without a trace. A nightmare indeed.

Data Backup and Recovery solutions. It's the spare key to your business.

While it doesn't ease the pain of having been robbed or been a victim to natural disasters, you can take a great deal of comfort in knowing that PTS Business Continuity solutions will have you covered.

Data Backup and Recovery and Cybersecurity protect your business from different angles and in different scenarios - they are not interchangeable. Each plays a role and both are equally important to running a business where patient information is safe and secure.

To learn more about these solutions and how they can help your business (or to enroll), please contact your Sales Representative.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lesley joined PTS in 2018 and brings 30 years of pharmacy experience to the McKesson family. When Lesley isn’t striving to make stores more efficient and profitable, you can find her challenging herself during her workouts. Lesley is never one to sit still!

Common crisis scenarios happen every day in pharmacies.  Ensuring there’s a recovery plan in place that reflects your business needs is the key to minimizing risks to your pharmacy’s day-to-day operations. Read about four everyday scenarios that can easily be prevented.

How to manage an internet outage with little to no interruption

Pharmacy technicians are processing compliance packaging batches for the week. Claim adjudication becomes agonizingly slow and claims begin to fail. There are now a large number of failed claims to resubmit. To make matters worse, the wait time for walk-in patients has doubled due to the slow claim adjudication. It turns out there is an internet service outage, and pharmacy claims have defaulted to dial-up adjudication. With the internet out, pharmacy team members also can’t access key patient care resources, and risk missing the daily order cut-off time.

Solution

Bell Fibe internet service strengthened by wireless LTE Internet backup, providing fast, reliable uptime. In the event of an internet service outage, connectivity automatically switches to Bell’s LTE cellular network. Most importantly, pharmacy claims and debit/credit transactions continue processing smoothly, with no impact to your business. It’s business as usual!

How to avoid lost opportunities

It’s Saturday afternoon. The store is busy and there is a steady line of customers at the checkout; a perfect day for any retail business owner, until debit and credit transactions start to fail. Since you can only accept cash, customers aren’t buying and are leaving the store in frustration. An excellent business day has turned into a disaster. The internet is up and fully functional, so why are the transactions failing? The culprits are employees streaming movies on their lunch break, taking up all the bandwidth. That same bandwidth is required for debit/credit claims. As soon as they shut down the streaming, debit/credit is back up and running. But how many sales did you lose in the meantime? How many of those customers will not return to your store?

Solution

A Cisco Meraki MX68CW router allows you to manage how internet bandwidth is allocated within your network, ensuring maximum uptime for your business systems. A percentage of bandwidth can be allocated for public Wi-Fi and employee devices, allowing employees to access Wi-Fi without impacting business continuity.

How to manage cybersecurity

It’s first thing Monday morning – one of the busiest days of the week for any pharmacy. Instead of starting the week on a positive note, you have received an irate telephone call from a parent of one of your teenage part-time employees. It seems the employee witnessed the weekend relief pharmacist surfing inappropriately explicit websites on a dispensary computer. As the owner/operator, you now have a number of potential issues on your hands: workplace harassment, labour board complaints, employee discipline, uncomfortable conversations with the impacted employees, appeasing the parents, addressing the overall situation with your entire workforce and the possibility that viruses or malware are now infecting your business systems. Your week will be consumed with putting out this fire.

Solution

Avoid this situation altogether. The Cisco Meraki MX68CW router uses content filtering to block access to undesired content, preventing anyone from browsing questionable websites. In addition to protecting critical business systems from potential cyber attack, this proactive approach to cybersecurity also minimizes exposure to risk and liability when it comes to complying with labour and workplace safety regulations.

Crisis overload

You’ve received a panicked phone call from the Store Manager. The internet browser on every computer displays an ominous message indicating that files have been encrypted until you pay a fine, or else they will be destroyed. Your business systems have been attacked by ransomware and are unusable. Do you pay the ransom, or have the systems restored from backups? Neither solution is ideal and there is a risk of lost data even if the ransom is paid, but business is at a standstill until this is resolved; no front shop sales can be processed, and no prescriptions dispensed. It can take days to restore and there’s still a possibility of lost data. How did this happen? The manager innocently clicked on a link in a suspicious email, unleashing the attack.

Solution

With unparalleled security capabilities and features to protect your business systems before, during and after an attack, cybersecurity (powered by a Cisco Meraki MX68CW router) scans data that is being downloaded from the internet, blocking and containing ransomware. Realtime detection discovers and enforces against intrusions, preventing damage from occurring. Cybersecurity is standing guard to ensure this scenario can’t happen to you.

Having a business continuity plan that includes internet backup and cybersecurity really goes a long way to reducing your downtime. discover more about business continuity and find the solutions that best support your disaster and recovery plan.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A part-time job at an Independent Pharmacy led to a 30+ year career in Pharmacy. Over the years, she has played key Product Management leadership roles in collaborating with retail pharmacy teams to design and develop both Nexxsys and PharmaClik Rx, the predecessors of Propel Rx. Sheri-Lyn currently oversees marketing for McKesson Canada's Technology Solutions division and believes that understanding the day-to-day challenges of Pharmacy puts PTS in a position to bring you the solutions you need to run your business.

As organizations around the world prepare for a potential increase in cyberattacks linked to the situation in Ukraine, we want to share important reminders on how PTS helps you stay vigilant. Your entire team plays a critical role to keep your business, your customers, and your patients cyber safe.

Phishing attacks

Phishing emails are typically linked to current events and create a heightened sense of urgency for the recipient to respond immediately to the request. Currently, phishing emails related to COVID-19, donating to the situation in Ukraine, and tax season are very common.

What can you do?

Your continued awareness and actions are a crucial part of preventing cybersecurity attacks. When it comes to keeping your cyber skills sharp, keep these tips top of mind:

1. Promptly report suspicious emails
2. Use strong passwords
3. Think before you click
4. Be careful with emails and mobile text messages
5. Beware of unexpected Multi-Factor Authentication requests

What else can you do?

PTS is committed to providing robust business continuity solutions that protect the safety, security, and integrity of your pharmacy. Business continuity is about having a plan to manage difficult situations (e.g. fire, flood & cyber attacks) so your pharmacy can continue to support patients with as little disruption as possible. Solutions like:

1. Cybersecurity  Keeps confidential files protected and safe
2. LTE Backup  Your business remains connected no matter what happens
3. Data Backup & Recovery  Ensures your data safe and recovery automatic
4. Store-to-Store VPN  Allows you to operate your business from any location
5. Remote Access  Enables your entire team to safely and securely from any location

The key to achieving peace of mind and security is having a business continuity plan in place should the unthinkable happen. Coupled with ongoing education with your pharmacy team on cybersecurity is your best bet to ensuring that the threat of a cyberattack never becomes your reality.

If you're been putting it off, now's the time to schedule a chat with one of our team members. Invest your time with a 15 minute phone call and explore your options.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Diana joined PTS in fall of 2020 as their Product Marketing Specialist. Diana’s passionate about how storytelling and messaging create value-add, business changing content. She enjoys collaborating with her team to achieve results. When Diana’s not busy writing, she’s exploring the local forest trails near her home north of Toronto, Ontario.