Will OTCs Help Reduce Healthcare Debt?

With the focus on healthcare changing, everybody in pharmacy is scrambling to show value added services and improved healthcare at lower reimbursement rates.

It’s everyone’s guess where the potential health plan will land, but rest assured, there will be a need for patients to spend more time looking at ways to make their healthcare dollars stretch.

Many employers are beginning to move towards the “Consumer” model where the patient or family member has to make informed decisions, and makes it not so appealing to run to the emergency room for every sniffle.

Having started my career twenty-five plus years ago as a stock boy in a pharmacy, I was always intrigued by OTC medications and vitamins. The sheer volume of vitamins we sold was incredible.

More important, the amount of OTC remedies that could, in some cases, save a trip to the emergency room, or the physician’s office always fascinated me.

As a pharmacist, we are always in a unique position to offer such OTCs where possible.

These, in many cases, are available in private label, thus reducing the cost to the patient.

Could this be a solution for healthcare spending?