Patient Advocacy: The Cycle of Paying It Forward

A look at how a pharmacist's local CPESN network, the Pennsylvania Pharmacists Care Network, and Flip the Pharmacy, helped one pharmacy better serve patients.

It was the spring of 2020. Independent community-based pharmacies were climbing an uphill battle against crushing DIR fees and tanking reimbursement rates; a raging pandemic only made it steeper. Will call bins overflowed, phones rang incessantly, and staff members did the work of three people, yet the bottom line declined month after month.

There had to be a better way.

How were other pharmacies optimizing their schedules and taking control of their workflows? Was there a place for community pharmacists to share our ideas and work together? How could my pharmacy better serve the community?

These questions led Ed Hudon to a late-night Google search, hunting for a way to accomplish more while doing less. It wasn’t long until he stumbled upon his local CPESN network, the Pennsylvania Pharmacists Care Network, and swiftly enrolled his pharmacy in cohort 2 of Flip the Pharmacy.

Ed Hudon is the pharmacist and owner at The Medicine Shoppe in Boyertown, Pennsylvania, although he prefers the title ‘Patient Advocate.’ “From pharmacists, to pharmacy technicians, to clerks working the registers, patient advocacy is at the core of our work,” Ed shares, “Flip the Pharmacy has given us the resources we need to better serve our community.”

Pharmacist Ed Hudon at his phamacy
Ed Hudon, pharmacist and owner at The Medicine Shoppe in Boyertown, Pennsylvania


As a part of Flip the Pharmacy, pharmacies like the Medicine Shoppe work on teams to transform their community-based pharmacy practice away from prescription-driven transactions toward a patient-centered longitudinal care model.

“I felt very isolated and alone before joining Flip the Pharmacy, struggling to make payroll and crying the blues about low reimbursement rates,” Ed admits, “Then, I found this community of people that genuinely wanted me to succeed. I no longer worried about my competitor, because I saw how we could change health care when we all worked together.”

Using monthly change packages, Flip the Pharmacy coaches work with local pharmacy teams to implement the six key transformation domains with an emphasis on continuing patient care planning with documentation in various eCare Plan platforms.

The Flip the Pharmacy difference became apparent to Ed’s staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, as they implemented the appointment-based model by leveraging medication synchronization. Medication synchronization involves proactively aligning medication fills on a single pharmacy appointment day to allow more time for the delivery of enhanced clinical services.

Ed proudly remembers the first day the state of Pennsylvania shut down due to COVID-19, when he closed the store at 6:00 PM with an empty will call–an unheard-of occurrence before Flip the Pharmacy. Thanks to medication synchronization, his team was able to notify each and every patient and distribute their medications in the wake of a closed state. With 85% of his patients now enrolled, Ed has regained control of his workflow and freed up countless hours to serve his patients in unique new ways.

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