At Rpharmy, we place the highest value on our customer relationships. If you know us, we’re always asking you what makes your day-to-day tedious so that we can alleviate that pain. This is how both Formweb and Rhazdrugs were created (check out how we got started here)! Naturally, when a new customer joined the Formweb family recently, we wanted to know what we were doing right and what we could do to make their lives easier.
During a recent visit with a health system implementing Formweb, they shared why they chose Formweb and the main differences they noticed between our software and their previous formulary management solution.
Here are our top 4 takeaways from that conversation.
To Restrict or Not to Restrict? That Is The Question.
While this health system was previously limited to designating a drug as restricted or not, Formweb allows them to add more detail about who has access to specific drugs. This capability eliminates many provider phone calls asking pharmacists why a drug appeared in the formulary but was unavailable to order through Epic. This health system didn’t have any way of labeling who had access to which drugs. The customer said the Formweb display allows them to share their inclusion or exclusion criteria. It’s also simple to do, even enabling editors to copy and paste information from another document.
We Walk a Lonely Road: The Boulevard of Broken Links
With their former formulary solution, safety and medication information documents were housed on a company intranet. Every time a new document version was uploaded to the intranet, the site generated a new URL linked to the document. The URL then had to be updated in Epic. A further challenge was uncertainty about where the URL lived, and attempting to capture and replace all of those required an IT ticket request. Are you exhausted yet? I am, and the complications don’t end there.
They also moved to a new version of SharePoint, which required the clinical pharmacy specialist to update all clinical guidelines manually. As they said, these are not static documents and require ongoing reviews, edits, and updates.
They now house their guidelines in a single platform: Formweb. The updating process has been considerably simplified. They can update these dynamic documents without changing URLs (i.e. no broken links). With more control and ease of use, the team joked that now they don’t face the ire of the IT department, which had been handling hundreds of IT tickets from the pharmacy.
I've Never Heard Silence Quite This Loud: The Symphony of Unanswered Customer Service Emails
This health system also expressed concerns with customer service accessibility and response times with their previous formulary management provider. Previously, when an issue or question came up, the team had to email their customer rep. Typically, responses could take days. In one instance, their rep left the company, and the health system did not know about the departure until their email went unanswered for weeks.
By contrast, the clinical pharmacy specialist generously praised the Rpharmy team, specifically Sherlene Christen, our Customer Experience Director, for her responsiveness and expertise as a 30-year pharmacy tech veteran and 15-year Formweb user. In fact, they said the level of customer service was the most significant difference between the two products. 💪
Instead of the previous rigid system, the team said Formweb is “a very flexible platform.” That flexibility extends to the Rpharmy team, who listens to creative product ideas or features and goes the extra mile to solve any problems customers may face or incorporate customized use cases of the products.
One Click Is All It Takes
As this health center dived into Formweb, they had questions. First, they wanted to search by therapeutic class. On their Formweb site, Sherlene showed them that the therapeutic classes are on the left-hand sidebar. Once clicked on, each drug in that class is listed. This is a direct route compared to the multiple clicks needed to get to this information in their former product. They said this level of accessibility “will be huge for staff.”
Their Formweb site is responsive, making it easy to navigate on desktops and mobile devices like phones and tablets. As part of our constant drive to make safety information easily accessible at the point of care, we are undergoing a massive customer experience upgrade and will begin work on the Formweb solution later this year. We can’t wait to share more as the project progresses.
Why Can’t You See? You Belong with Rpharmy.
These conversations drive the innovative spirit within Rpharmy. Our work all comes down to making your job easier while improving patient and healthcare worker safety. We are all ears if you have any questions or product feedback/requests (no really, we mean it). Email us at info@rpharmy.com or if you’re already a customer, you probably have Sherlene’s email and phone number on speed dial. 😁