MAC Rx: Making the Switch to FrameworkECM

Company Overview

MAC Rx offers a large pharmacy chain's breadth and scope of services but is small enough to customize its services to meet each facility's needs. MAC Rx utilizes innovative technology solutions and a centralized team that includes pharmacy consulting and nursing services to offer significant value to long-term care facilities and skilled nursing facilities across the Midwest.

Goal: Treat each resident like family, with only the best services and pricing available in the industry.

The Challenge: Hitting a Wall

Document management is an instrumental part of pharmacy. MAC Rx had been with DocuTrack for years and had many customized processes, but was outgrowing the software and experiencing limitations due to the solution’s capabilities and level of integration ability.

The Solution: Taking It to the Next Level

Miriam Cho, Chief Pharmacy Officer at MAC Rx, thoroughly researched their options, focusing on FrameworkECM (electronic content management solution). “With the seamless integration and data sharing between FrameworkLTC and FrameworkECM,” Cho said, “converting to FrameworkECM is what our pharmacy needed to take operations to the next level.”

To transition software in their lean pharmacy while continuing to service 18,000 residents, MAC Rx management knew they had to do three things:

• Get everyone’s buy-in, from managers down to the user level

• Put their confidence in SoftWriters’ implementation team

• Trust the process

Partnering for Success

MAC Rx successfully made it through the implementation process with preparation, communication throughout the team, and a strong partnership and trust with SoftWriters. FrameworkECM is a highly configurable solution, so MAC Rx management worked through the process with SoftWriters’ implementation team. The MAC Rx team anticipated apprehension with their staff, so they ensured that everyone from top to bottom understood the change and bought into the process. Here’s how the process felt to Miriam Cho, Chief Pharmacy Officer:

1. Discovery and design: “We were pretty overwhelmed at first, and our heads were spinning, but Courtney Hetler-Findlay took us through everything and explained the intricate process, giving us a lot of confidence. Together we created workflows unique to our process that have led to fewer touches, and we love that we’re able to visualize, control, and customize workflows ourselves.”

2. Training: “Training hundreds of people while still dispensing and not losing any money is tough — there are a lot of factors involved — but SoftWriters’ implementation team was exceptional. We utilized a conducive test environment. In addition to company-wide hands-on training over two days, we also required department-specific training where everyone could focus on their particular tasks within FrameworkECM.”

3. Launch: “Launch went better than we expected — we never had a late dispatch. We did a lot of preparation ahead of time, and numbers were back up for everyone after just two weeks on the new solution.”

4. Continued support: “After launching FrameworkECM, the MAC Rx team brought their questions to our project leads, who then had weekly touchpoints with Rich Ford at SoftWriters. It was effortless to troubleshoot and work through those early nuances. We plan to build a few more workflows based on how we’re operating, but we have had very few complaints from our team. FrameworkECM is very user-friendly and extremely streamlined.”

We have employees who are legacy DocuTrack users. They will say they enjoy the change and working with the program if you ask them. - Miriam Cho, Chief Pharmacy Officer/PIC/CCO, MAC Rx

The Results: Business Growth

MAC Rx is a highly efficient pharmacy that relies on detailed data to make all decisions. With its focus on metrics, it has successfully grown from servicing 18 facilities in 2015 to more than 140 in 2020 (a 7x Increase in Facilities Served in only 5 years with FrameworkECM)! In its lean operation, MAC Rx adds new technology to bring on additional facilities without needing additional staff.

Converting was intimidating, but with MAC Rx’s confidence and trust in SoftWriters’ implementation team and the process, transitioning to FrameworkECM was a huge success. “SoftWriters told us we’d recognize savings,” Cho said. “Over the first 90 days, we recognized a 45 percent savings in steps, and we never had a late dispatch, even during our initial conversation.”

To determine ROI, Miriam, and the team looked at over 23 processes they utilize. Then, they examined those processes in the former solution compared to FrameworkECM and realized they were able to reduce the number of steps almost by half.