Summary: This article provides strategies for scaling Long-Term Care (LTC) pharmacies, focusing on aspects like business expansion through acquisitions or new services, effective marketing techniques to attract clients, and the importance of specialized pharmacy software to enhance scalability and efficiency in meeting the growing demands of the aging population.

Table of Contents

1. Building or Acquiring to Increase Top-Line Revenue
2. Marketing Your LTC Pharmacy to Attract New Clients
3. Using LTC-Designed Pharmacy Software to Improve Scalability

Long-term care (LTC) pharmacies are always on the hunt for ways to scale their business and ensure they’re a lynchpin for their existing facility customers. Now, with the aging baby boomer generation projected to increase the number of Americans ages 65 and older from 46 million to more than 95 million by 2060, demand for long-term care has never been greater—and neither have the growth opportunities for LTC pharmacies.

With that said, scaling your LTC pharmacy business requires a thoughtful, strategic approach. Whether you’re looking to start a long-term care pharmacy from the ground up or you’re simply looking for ways to enhance your existing LTC pharmacy's scalability, the right strategy (coupled with the right technology) can help increase your growth and reduce your client churn. 

Here are three highly effective strategies for scaling your LTC pharmacy:

One way to scale your LTC pharmacy business, brand-new or existing, is to ensure you build or acquire in an area that can support an additional pharmacy. In fact, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the long-term care sector remained a leader in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity—momentum we can expect to continue in the months and years ahead as the population of older American grows.

Whether you’re looking to do so by way of acquisition, partnership, or newly added services, expanding your offerings (and, in turn, growing your top-line revenue) can increase your business’s cash flow, allow you to tap into new markets, and help you differentiate your LTC pharmacy from large chains and retail giants.

For example, offering additional products and services—such as flu shots and other vaccinations, 340B contract pricing, customized dispensing, compliance packaging, durable medical equipment, medication management, and medication synchronization—can enable LTC pharmacies to grow. You might also consider expanding to serve less traditional LTC customers, such as behavioral health facilities, correctional facilities, and/or meds-to-home patients.

Additionally, retail pharmacies struggling to keep up with big-box stores may expand or shift to a long-term care pharmacy in order to gain a newfound competitive edge and capitalize on ever-increasing opportunities within the LTC specialty.

Learn the key differences between retail and LTC pharmacy software, the signs that it is time to upgrade, and what to look for in an LTC pharmacy software solution when you download this guide. →

Even the most successful LTC pharmacies can do a better job of marketing their services to increase brand awareness and attract new facility customers. It goes without saying that LTC facilities want the best possible pharmacy partners, which is why it is important to market your business as the best and demonstrate your value in order to retain existing customers and minimize churn. 

According to Randy McDonough, co-owner and director of clinical services at Towncrest Pharmacy, achieving success in the LTC marketplace requires knowing the true value of the products and services offered: “When we talk to these group homes, assisted living facilities, and nursing homes, we always talk in terms of the services we can provide them. And we don’t cheapen those services. They aren’t something we give away. We make sure they understand the total value.”

To market your LTC pharmacy successfully, you need to understand the unique needs of your customers and the patients they serve. Gaining a comprehensive understanding of what your prospective facility customers expect from their LTC pharmacy is critical to winning (and keeping) their business. 

From there, you can identify various ways to stand out in the crowd and remain competitive. To do so effectively, you will need to identify your differentiators and spell them out for your prospective clients. For example, do you offer multi-dose compliance packaging options? Facility-centric customization? Flexible delivery schedules? What about cycle, per diem, and batch billing? 

Pinpointing what sets your LTC pharmacy apart from the rest—and then shining a spotlight on those key differentiators—can help you compete more effectively. Of course, it’s essential you deliver on your promises by offering unrivaled products, services, and support—otherwise, you’ll lose business as fast as you earn it. 

After all, word of mouth is a powerful marketing tactic, even for a closed-door pharmacy. You want to earn the best reputation possible to promote your growing LTC business.

Investing in LTC-designed pharmacy software is also an incredibly effective technique for scaling your LTC pharmacy business. Scalable pharmacy management solutions like FrameworkLTC—designed with the specific needs of LTC pharmacies, facilities, and patients in mind—enable continuous growth without the need to add more full-time employees (FTE) or increase manual, time-intensive processes.

Technology that’s designed with long-term care intricacies in mind can provide a number of different features unavailable with a retail pharmacy solution. LTC pharmacy software helps to streamline workflows, automate manual tasks, customize services to meet the unique needs of different facilities, gain better visibility into your operations, make data-driven decisions, curb billing complexities, and manage new services.

As a result, you can maximize your LTC pharmacy margins and compete more efficiently and effectively to take your business to the next level.

In addition to using pharmacy management software, LTC pharmacies can also leverage add-on solutions that sit on top of their base software to help facilitate scalability. For example, the FrameworkLTC platform of seamlessly integrates with SoftWriters’ complete suite of innovative software products designed to meet the needs of LTC pharmacy operations to act as one all-encompassing solution, including:

• FrameworkECM for Electronic Content Management

• FrameworkPOD for Delivery Management

• FrameworkLink for a Facility Web Portal

• FrameworkBI for Business Intelligence

• FrameworkHL7 for Interfacing Requests

• FrameworkFlow for Handheld Barcode Scanning

• RxPertise for Medication Regimen Review

Scaling your LTC pharmacy may seem like a daunting endeavor amid all your other daily responsibilities. However, by expanding your service offering, marketing your business and differentiators, and using the right LTC pharmacy management software, you can improve your efficiency and scale your business in the process. 

Want to learn more about using a scalable solution for LTC pharmacies? Schedule a demo to see FrameworkLTC (and the add-ons) in action.