Three Ways to Recharge Your Dispensary
If you’re reading this, it’s a good bet you understand the value of online dispensaries–less time spent on administrative work, more time with your patients and better outcomes for their health concerns and the health of your practice. Whether you’ve been running your online dispensary for a few weeks or a few years, here are three areas to check in on to make sure your dispensary is doing all it can for you and your patients.
What’s the primary reason you’ve taking your supplement sales online? Are you a new practitioner looking to deliver added value while also saving on overhead? Or maybe your practice is established and growing, but your supplement sales (and patient adherence rates) aren’t growing along with it. You might also see your dispensary as a means to earn patient loyalty to your practice by creating ease in their wellness journey.
Once you decide on the “mission” for your online dispensary, you’ll have a better sense of how to configure your storefront to meet the goals you have for yourself and your patients.
When you set up your dispensary, you’re also able to determine which products patients see. Most practitioners like to open the entire Wellevate offering of to patients, while others limit available products to only their favorites for their practice, or limit to specific products for specific patients. by purchases by practitioner brand or product preference. Still others may even restrict patient purchases to only those specific products that comprise the patient’s individualized recommendation.
What you choose depends on the purpose of your dispensary. For practitioners who want to maximize revenue from their dispensary, offering access to wellness basics and personal care items through more open settings may allow sales to grow fastest. For practitioners who want to create their dispensary as an exclusive benefit for patients only, keeping the dispensary more restricted may be the right approach.
The nature of your practice, the health concerns your patients bring to you and the complexity of your protocols can help determine who can access your dispensary (and how). With an “open dispensary” model, a general link to your practice dispensary allows anyone with that URL to visit your store and buy from you. Most practitioners choose this option, which allows them to create a dispensary link from their practice website that makes it easy for patients to order and reorder. It also means that patients could share information about your dispensary or products they are on with friends or family, who may show up to purchase. Choose this option if you want to maximize access to your store and you are comfortable with non-patients being able to access the products you offer. .
Practitioners who offer very selective or specific products for patients, or products which require specific or complex instructions prior to use may prefer to choose an “invitation-only dispensary”. With “invitation-only”, patients must be personally invited to have access to your online dispensary through a personalized email sent by Wellevate when you add the patient.
Don’t worry about getting it “wrong”—you can always change your settings later if your original model isn’t working for your practice.
