How to Set Your Birth Control Formulary and Inventory Levels
Inventory management can either make or break a pharmacy or clinic. It’s one of those things that you absolutely must keep a close eye on. Otherwise, things can go from good to bad and bad to worse very quickly.
For the patient, their most basic expectation is to walk into the pharmacy with their shiny, new prescription and leave with their medications in hand. That’s why it is absolutely crucial to carefully set your birth control formulary and appropriately set your inventory levels.
Which birth control products should I keep in stock?
If you are in a pharmacy that is already dispensing birth control prescriptions, you likely don’t need to make many changes at all! You can pick from the existing products that other birth control users are happy with when prescribing for your patients.
If you starting up and are a low volume clinic or pharmacy, simplicity is the key. Don’t stock your shelf full of 5 different equivalent generics that can be substituted for one another. Pick the one generic that is most cost effective or one that your patients most often request.
Choose medications to have on hand that can’t be substituted. Always keep Nuvaring, Xulane, and Depo-Provera or its generic on hand. These formulations are great options for people who have trouble adhering to a daily regimen or just don’t want to think about taking a pill every day.
Be sure to stock progestin only pills, extended cycle combination oral contraceptive (COC) pill packs, as well as emergency contraception because…well it’s in the name that it’s an emergency (Ella and Plan B One Step or generic). POPs are important to have stocked for your patients who may have contraindications to estrogen, such as migraines with aura or may be in the immediate postpartum period. There is only one progestin only pill formulation – norethindrone 0.35 mg.
When selecting the COCs to keep on hand, try to utilize the progestin’s class effects to your patient’s advantage. There are about 40 COC formulations on the market today. Narrow down the abundance of options when choosing your formulary by looking at how the progestins differ from one another. For instance, stock a COC that contains a progestin with low or no androgenic activity such as norgestimate or drospirenone respectively if your patient is concerned about or struggling with acne.
Other noncontraceptive benefits of hormonal pills that patients may request will be to suppress their menses. This is why we always want to have an extended regimen or even better a continuous regimen COC pack readily available. Yes, some of these are costly items that may not be your store’s “fast movers”, but having different formulations and the chance to get started on these right away will pay off in the end. The result being happy patients, happy pharmacy staff, and a larger base of pharmacy patrons.
Speaking of cost, inventory — if managed incorrectly — can come back to haunt you. Carefully controlling the inventory is how you will manage the potentially devastating high-cost of some medications. Like before, consider birth control options that cannot be substituted and limit your inventory on products that seem to have endless substitutions. Also, if you’ve noticed some insurances prefer certain products over others, keep that in mind as well.
How do I determine how much to keep on hand?
Once you’ve established what products you would like to keep on hand, look at your pharmacy’s dispensing history for each product. How many times do you dispense that product in a month’s time? Do you have a patron that comes in like clockwork every month for Yaz or LoLoestrin? Someone returning every three months for her 3-month supply? Here’s where utilizing a patient compliance tool to schedule refills, with the patient’s permission, can be extremely
Take all of these factors into account and utilize your inventory system’s options to set an order point or TIL (target inventory level). This will tell your computer to automatically order that medication once your BOH (balance on hand) drops below your pre-determined TIL. Most pharmacy systems have some version of this function and it can be a really helpful tool. The point here is to make sure you don’t have thousands of dollars in inventory sitting on your shelf gathering dust and worst case scenario expiring on the shelf. On the other side of that coin, you don’t want to turn patients away because you don’t stock the product that they are consistently picking up on a monthly It’s important to find a balance.
Patients in California and selected other states can now request up to an annual supply of their birth control to be dispensed and state law requires their health insurance company to cover this. Want to know more? Check out our recent article with more details.
Hopefully you find these tips useful in setting your birth control formulary and inventory.
About the Author:
Candace Stifflemire is a fourth-year pharmacy student at the University of the Incarnate Word Feik School of Pharmacy in San Antonio, Texas.