Who Is Selling Your Data?

A number of heads were turned this week when one of the major retail pharmacy dispensing system vendors announced a new program, which basically boils down to selling their customers’ data back to their customers. They put the industry on notice that they will begin making a charge to ScriptPro to provide dispensing data to ScriptPro’s Third Party Management System (TPMS). The charge will be proportionate to the pharmacy’s revenues, and the vendor expects that the charge will be passed through to the pharmacy.

TPMS uses dispensing data to help pharmacies manage third party revenues, push back against contract violations, reduce DIR fees, and take other actions to protect their income. These revenues are the lifeblood of retail pharmacies. TPMS is the most effective tool to manage revenue cycle dynamics and protect and increase pharmacy profitability. This vendor is, in effect, charging pharmacies for using the data generated by their vendor-provided dispensing system.

This is from an email sent by a TPMS customer to the vendor in response to this action (cc’d: to ScriptPro): “If there are any fees to be charged for providing our data, the fees should go to us since the data belongs to us.”

Here is some background:

1. There has long been an issue regarding who owns a pharmacy’s data and who benefits from selling this data. While chains and other large pharmacy operators carefully guard their data ownership and sale rights, data from other pharmacies are typically sold by dispensing system vendors, often without knowledge of the pharmacy’s owners. Selling pharmacy data has become the primary business model for many dispensing systems.
2. This data is valuable and is used in various ways within the pharmacy industry, such as by pharmaceutical manufacturers to drive targeted sales and market share programs.
3. It has always been ScriptPro’s policy that we do not sell our customers’ data. If requested, we help customers sell their own data by providing interfaces, data feeds, etc. But the revenues go to our customers. We have never earned a dollar from selling pharmacy data.
4. It has also been our policy to enable our customers to access their data to meet clinical, compliance, patient care, and other needs that go far beyond generating revenue from data sales.
5. Our focus will continue to be doing the right thing for our customers by providing outstanding systems and support to help them run all aspects of their business for their own benefit and for the benefit of their patients.

ScriptPro offers an efficient path with a powerful ROI for pharmacies that convert from non-ScriptPro operating systems to ScriptPro’s Pharmacy Management System (PMS).

ScriptPro endeavors to provide the best operating platform and helps pharmacies maximize the benefits of data utilization. This also preserves the ability of ScriptPro PMS customers to fully use the power of TPMS to manage the revenue side of their business.

With ScriptPro, you can clearly answer the question, “Who is selling my data?” Perhaps you will agree with us that, if your data is being sold, the entity that should be selling it is you. And you should not have to buy your own data to use a powerful tool like TPMS to manage third party revenues.

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