Expires 04/01/2021

Specialty Pharmacy

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Alto Pharmacy Technician

Alto Pharmacist

Our mission at Alto is to fulfill medicine’s true purpose — to improve quality of life — for everyone who needs it.

Services that reduce travel and encourage social distancing are now more essential than ever, not only for vulnerable populations but all of us as members of our communities. Alto’s free same-day doorstep delivery ensures you have safe and reliable access to medications in this time of uncertainty. 

Hear first-hand from members of the Alto technology teams.

Alto / Blog

In honor of National Coming Out day our Proud Employee Resource Group sat down with Altoid Nicholas Satow, Partnerships Manager HIV/PreP, to learn about his own personal experience and his advice for others on coming out.

Coming Out with Pride: Nicholas Satow Shares His Story

This year marks the 32nd anniversary of National Coming Out Day, a time to support lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and transexual individuals. In honor of this awareness day our Proud Employee Resource Group sat down with Altoid Nicholas Satow, Partnerships Manager HIV/PrEP, to learn about his own personal experience and his advice for others on coming out. ERG’s are voluntary, employee-led groups that foster a diverse, inclusive workplace aligned with organizational mission, values, goals, business practices, and objectives.

Q: Tell us a little about your coming out experience. When did it happen and who did you first tell? 

A: My coming out story starts with the story of my best friend. We met in third grade and were just 15-years-old when she came out to me. She was a star basketball player and met a girl from an opposing high school team 45 miles away. We quickly turned 16, and without our parents’ knowledge, we were driving 90 miles round trip every weekend to go see her girlfriend and hang out with a group of kids who didn’t know anyone from our school district. The 45 miles of distance made her feel safe from our friends and family finding out about her double life.

Leading a double life and constantly hiding our whereabouts started to wear on us. Especially for her after family and friends started becoming suspicious. Who is this girl you’re always on the phone with? Why are there so many miles on your car? Where are you going? Her fear of being outed or disowned started to build as rumors began to circulate between friends and family.

It was a Saturday night, and we were halfway through our 45 mile drive home. She broke down in tears and started to share terrifying thoughts she’d been having. She said she couldn’t take the pressure of the double life anymore and the rumors circulating at school. She felt extremely overwhelmed, isolated, and scared. Thoughts of teenage suicide and stories I had heard of queer teens taking their own lives started to consume my mind. Even though I wasn’t ready to come out of the closet yet, I knew in that moment my friend needed me more than ever. I felt responsible for her loneliness and selfish for making her go through this journey alone. She said, “I can’t take this anymore. I can’t live like this,” Staring at the road ahead, I said, “You need to stay strong. You make me strong.” I turned and looked at her and said, “I’m gay, too.” This was the first time I said those words out loud. It was terrifying and relieving at the same time. It was the first time I felt authentically me. 

It’s 15+ years later, and we’ve helped each other get through many scary thoughts and tough times, come out of the closet to friends and family (sometimes while sitting side-by-side) and navigate difficult romantic relationships as we learned what it was like to be a young gay person in Cleveland, Ohio.

Q: How did you feel as a result of coming out? 

A: After coming out to my best friend, I felt a sense of relief and companionship. Our double lives became more of a shared experience and a lot easier to manage, knowing we had each other to rely on. I also started to feel more comfortable coming out to other friends. At 18, I came out to all my friends. At 22, I came out to my parents and family.

Q: What resources, support groups, or communities did you rely on when coming out? 

A: At the time, I wasn’t aware of any resources or support groups, so this wasn’t something I utilized. Another best friend’s older brother was gay, so I learned a lot from him, and he took me out to introduce me to the community and become comfortable in my own skin.

Q: What advice would you give to others? 

A: The best advice I’d give to LGBTQIA+ youth is to find a support system of like-minded individuals and come out when you feel it’s safe to do so. If you’re in an environment where you feel your mental or physical safety could be jeopardized, don’t come out until those dangers are gone. If being disowned, financially cut-off, or assaulted is a possible reality, make sure you have somewhere safe to go where your basic needs can be met. There will always be people who won’t accept you for who you are, but there will be even more who will support you. You just need to find that community. 

Q:  Why is it important for you to work at a company that values diversity in all forms?

A: Companies that support diversity help us evolve into a more accepting society. When people are exposed to colleagues who are different from them, they get to know each other on a personal level and start to realize that we are all more similar than different. I believe these experiences translate into the way people treat others outside of work and how they raise their children.

At Alto, we believe in a world where every perspective matters and that diversity fosters creativity and creates innovation. We welcome candidates of all backgrounds, skill sets, and experiences. To learn more, read Why We Prioritize Diversity at Alto. 

For more information on how to make your workplace safe and equitable for all, read 11 Simple Ways You (Yes, You!) Can Make Your Workplace More LGBTQ Inclusive. 

If you or someone you know is considering coming out, we encourage you to review these resources: 

Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) Recommended Reading: Coming Out

Coming Out with Pride: Nicholas Satow Shares His Story 

Nicholas Satow (center) with Camp Lightbulb leaders

Sandra Aziz, Alto Pharmacy Launch Manager and Pharmacist in Charge of our Los Angeles location, was recently selected by the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) to receive an “Apple for Excellence in Precepting” award.

From Pharmacist to Professor: Sandra Aziz Spotlight

Sandra Aziz, Pharmacy Launch Manager and Pharmacist in Charge of our Los Angeles location, was recently selected by the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) to receive an “Apple for Excellence in Precepting” award. This celebrated accolade recognizes Sandra for her contributions to the experiential preceptorship program over the past academic year. In addition to this award, Sandra was recently appointed Assistant Clinical Professor at UCSF!

Preceptors are practicing pharmacists who provide guidance and supervision to pharmacy students. They selflessly act as mentors in addition to their already demanding day-to-day responsibilities. Over the last two years Sandra has mentored ten interns at our Los Angeles pharmacy location. Her responsibilities include building curriculums for their continued learning, and acting as a mentor and coach to help students reach their goals. With Sandra’s guidance, eight students were accepted at their preferred residency/fellowship programs!

Read on to learn more about Sandra, what brought her to Alto and how the Gilmore Girls inspired her.

Congrats on being recognized as an exceptional teacher, role model and mentor! How does it feel? 

It’s really rewarding! I spend a lot of time creating detailed syllabi to provide students with a wide range of learning opportunities at Alto that they likely would not get at another pharmacy. It feels great knowing that students value their experience and learnings with us. Even further, when students are interested in coming back and working at Alto post graduation — that’s the best feeling.

What would you tell pharmacy students considering selecting Alto Pharmacy as a placement site for their rotations? 

If you’re looking to experience how a healthcare technology startup operates, you should absolutely consider Alto!

In this unique learning environment, you will gain a breadth of experience working on projects alongside clinical care staff, engineers, operations managers, and product designers. You will be involved in process improvement projects that improve efficiencies, quality assurance and further preventative healthcare. Ultimately, you will be helping redefine how community pharmacies can serve patients and their communities!

Who is/was an influential person in your life and why? 

I always struggle with this question because growing up, my answer was Lorelai and Rory Gilmore from the TV show Gilmore Girls - two strong, well-spoken women who worked hard to be self-sufficient. 

But the most influential person in my life was my dad; no matter what battle he was facing, he always met it with a smile, kindness, and an awful joke. 

You’ve been with Alto now for three years. What do you enjoy most about being a part of the team? 
My favorite thing about working at Alto is that I get to work with folks from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines on a daily basis: finance, product, engineering, etc. It gives me perspective and allows me to see challenges from various angles and problem solve accordingly. 

And finally, what do you like to do outside of work? 

I love looking at real estate, especially being in LA. My RedFin filter is set to $10M+ and any chance I can get to an open house, I absolutely will. Additionally, I have a sweet little black cat named Noodle whose self-designated play time is 2AM. 

If you have any questions about Alto, or are interested in joining our team, please visit alto.com/careers.

Alto is committed to ensuring affordable, timely access to medications and full-service pharmacy coverage, including specialty medications for the treatment of complex and chronic conditions.

Hims & Hers, the direct-to-consumer digital health company, has partnered with Alto Pharmacy to offer free, same-day courier medication delivery for customers accessing primary care services through its growing telehealth platform. 

Patients using the Hims & Hers platform to access primary care services in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Orange County, Seattle, Las Vegas and Denver-Boulder communities will have the option to select Alto as their preferred pharmacy for prescription delivery. Prescriptions for patients selecting Alto will flow automatically to Alto for fulfillment, and patients can use the Alto app to select their preferred date and time for free home delivery, review copay and medication info, and message a pharmacist with any questions. 

“At Alto, we’re constantly looking for new ways to improve the healthcare and pharmacy experience and we’re excited to partner with Hims & Hers to offer free, same-day courier medication delivery for their patients,” says Omar Nagji, Vice President of Enterprise at Alto Pharmacy. “Our partnership with Hims & Hers offers patients control, discretion, and pharmacist access without making a trip to a doctor’s office or pharmacy.”

“Hims & Hers is a natural partner to Alto’s courier-based platform,” says Melissa Baird, COO of Hims & Hers. “We’re excited to work with Alto to bring the ease and convenience of their same-day delivery experience to those using Hims & Hers to access primary care services."

Streamlined digital healthcare services are more critical than ever as patients look to balance healthcare needs with social distancing considerations, and are key to expanding access to traditionally underserved communities. Alto is committed to ensuring affordable, timely access to medications and full-service pharmacy coverage, including specialty medications for the treatment of complex and chronic conditions.

Hims & Hers customers using Alto will get full access to Alto’s exceptional care and services: price investigation and automatic coupon application, easy access to chat with a pharmacist, medication reminders and other support tools, and the option to streamline all medications for the household into one easy delivery. Alto’s safe, secure courier delivery is always free.

Hims & Hers Partners with Alto for Same-Day Prescription Delivery for Primary Care Patients

Alto’s expansion brings free daily doorstep delivery of medications to Seattle metro area residents

Starting Wednesday, April 15, residents of the Seattle metro area can now choose Alto’s same-day doorstep delivery for their pharmacy needs. 

At Alto, we believe it’s our job to ensure you have your medications at the best price, on time and with the support you need. We bring pharmacy to you - no more waiting in line, making an extra trip, or finding out your prescription isn’t ready to be picked up after you’ve already arrived. Our free doorstep delivery means your medications come directly to you on the day and time you select, and most medications are available the same-day. Stay up to date on your courier’s progress with text alerts or in our mobile app. 

Starting a new medication or doing an injection for the first time? Message a pharmacist with your questions, even in the evenings and on weekends. And we’re a full service pharmacy - we stock all major brand, generic, over-the-counter and specialty medications, meaning your entire family’s pharmacy needs can be managed in the Alto app and coordinated into one delivery.

Monday - Friday: 6 – 9 pm PT
Saturday: 2 – 5 pm PT

Monday - Friday: 12:30 – 7 pm PT
Saturday: 10 am – 5 pm PT (closed on Sundays)
Please note that we are currently offering curbside pick-up only for walk-in business.

Seattle area residents interested in using Alto’s services for their medication needs can ask their doctor’s office to send all prescriptions to Alto Pharmacy (via ePrescribe, phone or fax). Have existing prescriptions at another pharmacy? Start a transfer online or give us a call at 1 (800) 874-5881, and we’ll handle the switch.

Alto is proud to be growing in Seattle, and we’re committed to bringing exceptional care to our families, neighbors, friends and fellow healthcare professionals. Our Seattle location allows us to provide a better pharmacy experience to the hundreds of thousands of residents who call this area home.

“I know that the Seattle community is going to love both the convenience of Alto’s delivery and high quality service that Alto’s team provides,” says Betty Cheung, Pharmacist in Charge of Alto’s Seattle location. “As a pharmacist and healthcare professional, I’m particularly glad more residents will now have access to our contact-free delivery model - it’s the safest choice for medication needs during our current shelter-in-place period for COVID-19.”

Once things get back to normal and we’re all moving out and about, come say hello! Stop by during our in-person pickup hours to meet Betty and the team. We're located at 13010 NE 20th Street, Suite 200 in Bellevue.

General customer support hours are Monday - Friday 9 am - 9 pm PT and Saturday - Sunday 10 am - 6 pm PT. Patients can reach out to Alto via phone/text at 1 (800) 874-5881, email or app.

Founded in 2015, Alto is a patient-centric digital pharmacy based committed to the health and wellbeing of you and your family. We provide free same-day delivery to your door seven days a week for prescriptions, but, more importantly, offer cost transparency, personalized in-app and phone support, and real-time coordination with doctors and insurance companies to get you the care that you need. Alto is headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Denver and currently delivers across the greater Bay Area, Los Angeles, Orange County, Seattle, Denver and Las Vegas.

Alto’s expansion brings free daily doorstep delivery of medications to Las Vegas metro area residents

Starting Wednesday, April 15, residents of the Las Vegas metro area can now choose Alto’s same-day doorstep delivery for their pharmacy needs. 

Monday - Friday: 6–9 pm PT
Saturday - Sunday: 12–3 pm PT

Monday - Friday: 12:30 – 6 pm PT
Saturday - Sunday: 9 – 5:30 pm PT 
Please note that we are currently offering curbside pick-up only for walk-in business.

Las Vegas area residents interested in using Alto’s services for their medication needs can ask their doctor’s office to send all prescriptions to Alto Pharmacy (via ePrescribe, phone or fax). Have existing prescriptions at another pharmacy? Start a transfer online or give us a call at 1 (800) 874-5881, and we’ll handle the switch.

Alto is proud to be growing in Las Vegas, and we’re committed to bringing exceptional care to our families, neighbors, friends and fellow healthcare professionals. Our Las Vegas location allows us to provide a better pharmacy experience to the hundreds of thousands of residents who call this area home.

“The Las Vegas community deserves something different when it comes to pharmacy, and Alto’s model can really make a difference,” says Bang Le, Pharmacist in Charge of Alto’s Las Vegas location. “As a pharmacist and healthcare professional, I’m particularly glad more residents will now have access to our contact-free delivery model - it’s the safest choice for medication needs during our current shelter-in-place period for COVID-19.”

Once things get back to normal and we’re all moving out and about, come say hello! Stop by during our in-person pickup hours to meet Bang and the team. We're located at 600 E Pilot Road, Suite A.

Customer support hours are Monday - Friday 9 am - 9 pm PT and Saturday - Sunday 10 am - 6 pm PT. Patients can reach out to Alto via phone/text at 1 (800) 874-5881, email or app.

Alto’s expansion brings free daily doorstep delivery of medications to Denver-Boulder metro area residents

Starting Wednesday, April 15, residents of the Denver-Boulder metro area can now choose Alto’s same-day doorstep delivery for their pharmacy needs. 

Monday - Friday: 6:30 – 9:30 pm MT in Denver, 7 - 10 pm MT for Boulder and outlying areas
Saturday: 2 – 5 pm MT in Denver, 2:30 - 5:30 pm MT for Boulder and outlying areas

Monday - Friday: 12 – 6 pm MT
Saturday: 9:30 am – 6 pm MT (closed on Sundays)
Please note that we are currently offering curbside pick-up only for walk-in business.

Denver and Boulder area residents interested in using Alto’s services for their medication needs can ask their doctor’s office to send all prescriptions to Alto Pharmacy (via ePrescribe, phone or fax). Have existing prescriptions at another pharmacy? Start a transfer online or give us a call at 1 (800) 874-5881, and we’ll handle the switch.

Alto is proud to call Denver our second home. Our HQ2, located in Denver’s Golden Triangle neighborhood, employs more than 225 area residents in pharmacy, operations, finance, engineering, and customer support. We’re committed to bringing exceptional care to our families, neighbors, friends and fellow healthcare professionals. 

“As a member of the Denver community, I’m excited to bring the Alto pharmacy experience to my neighbors and family,” says Andrew Storjohann, Pharmacist in Charge of Alto’s Denver location. “As a pharmacist and healthcare professional, I’m particularly glad more residents will now have access to our contact-free delivery model - it’s the safest choice for medication needs during our current shelter-in-place period for COVID-19.”

Once things get back to normal and we’re all moving out and about, come say hello! Stop by during our in-person pickup hours to meet Andrew and the team. We're located at 929 Broadway in downtown Denver.

General customer support hours are Monday - Friday 10 am - 10 pm MT and Saturday - Sunday 11 am - 7 pm MT. Patients can reach out to Alto via phone/text at 1 (800) 874-5881, email or app.

Rafi Benzaquen is Head of Delivery Operations at Alto Pharmacy and is one of the Alto employees leading the charge on a donation drive for critical personal protective equipment (PPE) for frontline healthcare workers. We caught up with Rafi to learn more about the program and how Alto is giving back to the community in the face of COVID-19. To learn more about the PPE donation program or to request a pickup of supplies, check out our blog here.

What do you do at Alto and what led you to join Alto?

I run our delivery operations at Alto, managing systems to ensure that thousands of patients receive their medications each day. I started my career in strategy consulting and often felt disconnected from the impact of my work which is what led me to start working at startups. I worked on operations and driver support at Uber for over four years. I loved being able to have an impact on the driver experience and saw how much Uber could have an impact on these folks' lives.  

I joined Alto because I was inspired by Alto’s mission to help patients, and I’m able to have an impact in creating jobs and opportunities for couriers.

How did you get involved in efforts to leverage Alto’s work to get donations of PPE to hospitals?

For me, this program is personal. I have friends and family who work in the medical field - my dad is a doctor in New York and my best friend is a doctor in LA. I’ve been hearing from them firsthand what they are dealing with due to COVID-19, such as friends stating: “I have one N95 mask and I have to re-use it.” I have really internalized what is going on and realize how important it is to help.

I feel lucky that I can leverage Alto’s systems and expertise to have an impact here. Our company values include leading from a place of empathy and focusing on impact. I am grateful that our leadership team has enthusiastically supported our efforts to launch this program.

How are you leveraging Alto’s systems and your experience to help organize pickups of PPE donations?

Because of the pharmacy delivery work that we do at Alto, we have the couriers, the reach, and the personnel for this type of program. Our team is collecting info from people who have supplies to donate, coordinating courier routes to collect donations, and then partnering with other organizations such as GetMePPE - Bay Area to help ensure an equitable distribution of donations to the hospitals that have the highest need each day.

Our CEO committed to cover the costs of paying Alto couriers to pick up donations and drop them off at hospitals. Aside from the impact on frontline healthcare personnel, this program has also created more jobs for couriers, many of whom have been laid off by other part-time jobs. We’ve also put processes in place to safeguard courier health when they collect donations and are paying a higher rate for this project. 

What has been the impact of this effort so far?

We launched this offering in the Bay Area just last week and we have already received a great response.  We’ve collected >3,700 masks, >13,500 gloves, as well as sanitizing wipes, hand sanitizer, and goggles to donate to numerous hospitals throughout the Bay Area. We have more pickup times available this week, and I’m excited to see what else we collect.

We’re also talking to a number of different hospitals and organizations to explore how our expertise and experience managing delivery logistics can help with other efforts to get PPE to frontline healthcare workers.  

I’ve been blown away by how many people have already donated through us and am excited that we are expanding this program to Seattle, Los Angeles and Orange County. I feel really grateful that Alto is working to support our communities who are dealing with the impacts of COVID-19.

I want to thank everyone at Alto who has been involved in this effort. Specifically, Frances Schendle, Hannah Byam, Jaime LaFontaine, Kevin Ruiz, Joe Young, Spencer Armini, Hilary Dalrymple and our amazing couriers who have been instrumental in execution of this program.

To request a pickup of donations, fill out this form.

Powered by People Who Care: An Altoid Profile

Mattieu Gamache-Asselin, Co-founder & CEO, and Jamie Karraker, Co-founder & CTO

Since our start as a community pharmacy here in San Francisco’s Mission District more than four years ago, Alto has remained committed to delivering on medicine’s true purpose — to improve quality of life for everyone who needs it. This mission, realized through doorstep medication delivery and remote access to pharmacists, is key to ensuring uninterrupted access to critical treatments and helping contain the community spread of COVID-19. 

In this period of uncertainty and change, here are our commitments to you:

We are here to serve you. We remain open for business at all locations, with delivery windows seven days a week and couriers at the ready. We’ve implemented a no-contact delivery protocol to ensure the safety of both our customers and our couriers. Our shelves are stocked with both common and specialty medications, and our pharmacists are available to answer your question by phone, text or secure message in our mobile app so you can stay at home. 

If you have family members, neighbors and friends in our service areas who would benefit from the safety of home delivery, please share Alto’s information with them. Our team is ready to assist with prescription transfers and insurance coordination, and most medications are available for same-day delivery. If for any reason we can’t fill your prescription, we’ll help you find a pharmacy that can.

None of this is possible without the hard work, long hours, flexibility, and dedication of our team. Every role at Alto is critical to ensuring our continued operational readiness, but our local pharmacy fulfillment teams and courier fleet gracefully take on additional risk to ensure prompt delivery of medications. To recognize these contributions, we are raising hourly pay for our frontline fulfillment team members by $2/hour, effective March 31st, for the duration of the stay-at-home order in their respective locations. We’re also providing a one-time bonus payment of $140 to members of our courier fleet on April 10th. 

We have the utmost respect for our healthcare colleagues working on the frontlines of treating this pandemic. We are partnering with doctors, nurses and clinic staff to assist with the transition to telemedicine care. We are carefully managing our supply chain to guard against potential shortages for your patients. And we are working with area health systems, governments and employers to make sure that Alto’s free doorstep medication delivery is available as an option to as many individuals as possible.

We’ve also leveraged our courier fleet to facilitate a personal protective equipment (PPE) drive in the SF Bay Area, Los Angeles, Orange County, and Seattle. In just over a week, we’ve coordinated more than 100 donation pick-ups with more than 4,700 masks and respirators, 16,000 gloves, goggles, and cleaning supplies with delivery to area hospitals. 

We are honored to be your pharmacy partner and play a small role in ensuring the health and safety of our communities. 

Matt Gamache-Asselin and Jamie Karraker
Co-founders, Alto Pharmacy

Re-creating a Community Pharmacy in the Time of COVID-19

Alto's PPE donation pick-up drive adds more windows in San Francisco, launches donation pick-up windows in Seattle, Los Angeles and Orange County

Alto launched its inaugural PPE donation pick-up drive on Friday, March 27th. In just one week, our fleet of couriers has conducted more than 85 pick-ups of personal protective equipment (PPE) and other critical supplies. Thanks to the generosity of the greater San Francisco Bay Area community, more than 4,700 masks, 16,000 gloves and other supplies have been delivered to the medical staff working the front lines at facilities including San Ramon Regional Medical Center, St. Rose Hospital, Sutter Health Eden Medical Center ER, UCSF Mission Bay, Kaiser Oakland, and Washington Hospital. We are grateful for the partnership of the team at GetMePPE Bay Area for their guidance on ensuring the donations are addressing critical shortages throughout the community. The team at GetMePPE Bay Area has helped coordinate donations to all of the following area facilities:

Sutter Health,   Kaiser San Jose
Kaiser Redwood City,   San Ramon Regional Medical Center
St. Rose Hospital,   Palo Alto VA
Washington Hospital,   El Camino Hospital
UCSF,   Kaiser Regional - Diablo Marin Sonoma
Kaiser San Leandro,   Kaiser Oakland
Kaiser Richmond,   Kaiser Santa Clara
Kaiser Antioch,   Valley Medical Center Foundation
Kaiser Fremont,   Alameda Health System
Chinese Hospital,   Contra Costa County Health Services
Marin General Hospital,   Kaiser San Rafael
Stanford Medicine,   John Muir

Given the initial success of our Bay Area donation program, we are expanding this effort to our Los Angeles, Orange County and Seattle courier delivery zones. Health systems throughout these regions are experiencing a shortage of the PPE that healthcare workers need to stay safe while providing care for the increasing numbers of COVID-19 (coronavirus) patients. Donations will be retrieved by our Alto courier team and will go directly to the healthcare providers at hospitals throughout our communities. 

Unused disposable N95 respirators and surgical masks.*

Unopened containers of disinfectants and disinfectant wipes

*The packages can be opened, as long as the masks have not been used.

First, confirm that you are in our SF, Seattle, LA and OC courier zones here, and then complete this short form to request a donation pickup. 

Please print off this form and follow the instructions for placing the donation items in an enclosed bag. Label the bag "Alto Donation," include the form, and leave the donation bag in the designated safe place before the start of the scheduled pick-up window. An Alto courier will come to pick up the donations - no contact needed!

Wednesday, April 15 between 9 am and 1 pm

Requests must be made before 8pm on the evening before the window. Read more about the original donation drive and common FAQs here.

Connecting Crucial COVID-19 Supplies with Healthcare Workers

Our mission is to fulfill medicine’s true purpose — to improve quality of life — for everyone who needs it. That takes a dedicated team of mission-driven, value-minded people. Read on to figure out if Alto is the right career move for you.

Help Us Shape the Future of Healthcare

Working at Alto isn’t just a job. For every team member, from product designers to pharmacists to patient care gurus, Alto is a means to a fulfilling career focused on making a difference in the lives of people who rely on prescription medicine to lead healthy, happy lives. In the process, we’re also changing an industry that has long gone unchecked.

At the highest level, Alto is a pharmacy. But we are not a traditional pharmacy. Instead of operating dozens of small-volume distribution sites across a metro area like chain pharmacies, we own and operate high-volume pharmacy fulfillment centers staffed by small, highly efficient teams supported by proprietary technology. We have one fulfillment center per metro area that we serve, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Orange County, and a centralized operations facility in Denver. Out of our fulfillment centers, we process and fill prescription orders and deliver directly to patients’ homes or offices by way of our free, same-day courier service.

On top of the convenience and accessibility of same-day delivery, Alto has three product pillars that allow us to deliver an exceptional experience to our users: the Alto Patient app, Alto MD, and Wunderbar. Learn more about our products and our industry-disrupting business model.

Alto is the world’s most patient-centric pharmacy. Our goal is not simply to distribute prescription medications but to improve patients’ health outcomes and their quality of life and to make those improvements accessible to everybody.

To get to that point, we need to understand what’s preventing patients from accessing all the benefits medicine has to offer. We believe it’s especially important to address the high-level problem of non-adherence, which is when patients don’t take the medication they’re prescribed. It also means learning how to scale our technology and processes to bring our products to more people in current and new markets. To achieve both of these things, we need to first scale our team. Learn more about Alto’s potential for growth and plans for the future, and how our team contributes to our success.

Loving what you do starts with doing something you believe in. It’s enriched by working alongside people who share your goals in an environment conducive to your work style and aspirations. At the foundation of Alto’s culture is our mission; our core values like acting empathically, thinking rigorously, making impact, staying humble, and putting patients first; the diverse backgrounds of our team members; and the supportive but highly autonomous way we get work done. Learn more about the Alto’s values and culture through the eyes of our CTO and co-founder, Jamie Karraker.

If Alto sounds like an environment you would thrive in, we would love to hear from you! We’re always on the lookout for great people to fill in our product, design, engineering, analytics, people, recruiting, finance, sales, business operations, logistics, pharmacy, and patient care teams. Check out our open positions to see if there is an opportunity that’s right for you!

At Alto, we’re putting patients first with free, same-day medication delivery; always-there, cost-saving support from our dedicated pharmacists and care team; and a cheerful online interface where people can conveniently manage all their prescriptions. Here’s how we make it work.

How Alto Pharmacy Is Using Tech to Put Patients First

Above all, Alto Pharmacy strives to fulfill medicine’s true purpose — to improve quality of life — for everyone who needs it. In working toward that mission, we’re building technology to disrupt the healthcare industry, which has long deprioritized the patient experience. At Alto, we’re putting patients first with free, same-day medication delivery; always-there, cost-saving support from our dedicated pharmacists and care team; and a cheerful online interface where people can conveniently manage all their prescriptions. Here’s how we make it work.

At the highest level, Alto is a pharmacy. But we are not a traditional pharmacy. Instead of operating dozens of small-volume distribution sites across a metro area like chain pharmacies, we own and operate high-volume pharmacy fulfillment centers staffed by small, highly efficient teams supported by proprietary technology. We have one fulfillment center per metro area that we serve, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Orange County, and a headquarters in Denver, where we are centralizing and growing our care operations team. Out of our fulfillment centers, we process and fill prescription orders and hand deliver them directly to patients’ homes or offices. About seven million people fall within the delivery zone of our San Francisco fulfillment center alone. In Southern California, our delivery radius covers another 20 million people.

Our model is made possible thanks to three Alto products:

With the easy-to-use Alto Patient app, people can consult a friendly and knowledgeable Alto pharmacist, schedule deliveries, and otherwise manage and learn more about their medications. Through the Alto Patient app, our care team also works with people to find them ways to save on their prescription costs.

AltoMD is our physician-facing product that allows physicians to easily manage the pharmacy needs of their patients that use Alto. The beauty of AltoMD is that it simplifies the workflows of the medical practices that use it. The typical clinic spends an average of 20 hours of administrative time per physician, per week, just on pharmacy workflows. In relieving practices of many of these administrative tasks, Alto reduces the likelihood of human error and redirects physicians’ time and energies back to their patients. In turn, Alto helps ensure treatment adherence and a better overall healthcare experience, making it a win-win for physicians and patients alike.

Wunderbar is the internal technology our pharmacists and care teams use to manage their workflows. It also controls the robots that fill every prescription order. Wunderbar was built and continues to be improved in house, giving us a strong foundation to grow and scale.

My co-founder, Matt Gamache-Asselin, and I came up with the idea for Alto in 2015, when we were working as software engineers at Parse, a Facebook-owned company. By then, our years in Silicon Valley had left us jaded and disillusioned with a tech industry that had lost sight of what really matters. We watched companies pour their resources into addressing the not-so-meaningful problems of the 1% while the broader population went underserved by many of the technological innovations being developed. We wanted to use our time, energy, and experience in consumer products to build something with the potential to have tangible, positive impact on the lives of all people. That led us first to healthcare — a big, broken industry with a terrible reputation — and then, more specifically, to pharmacy.

Our research revealed that no pharmacy incumbents think of themselves as consumer product companies. Unlike the Facebooks of the world, which are constantly optimizing how people use their products, pharmacy incumbents deprioritize it. We saw that gap as an opportunity to use our technical expertise to bring a people-focused mindset to the industry.

Back then, neither Matt nor I had any pharmacy experience. So, we left our jobs and dove in headfirst. After raising some capital, we purchased and ran a mom-and-pop operation, A-G Pharmacy, that had been serving San Francisco’s Mission District for more than 50 years.

We learned by fire how pharmacies work (and don’t). Soon enough, it became clear to us that despite caring about their patients, the A-G team wasn’t able to give them the best possible experience because they didn’t have the right tools. They were using antiquated software that required clumsy, inefficient work-arounds like relying on analog typewriters to create prescription labels. Because they didn’t have a streamlined operation, patients didn’t receive a streamlined experience.

We further discovered that technology wasn’t connecting the right stakeholders across the industry either. Pharmacy transactions require coordination between the physicians choosing the medication, the insurance companies paying for the medication, the pharmacies filling the orders, and the patients ultimately using the medications. The industry standard has been to conduct that coordination by fax and phone. That makes coordination slow, disjointed, and prone to things falling through the cracks. Patients take the brunt of those issues.

It became clear to us that Alto’s software needed to deeply integrate with and connect the disparate systems that stakeholders use. We also wanted to give stakeholders tools to solve other workflow issues not being addressed by their existing systems. And so Alto’s suite of products came to be.

A single Alto fulfillment center can serve as many people as 400 chain pharmacy locations, and we do it with a much smaller team thanks to our proprietary technology. That saves our company resources that we reinvest in the Alto experience. By way of example, we’ve developed specialized expertise in managing the coordination of complex therapeutics like fertility treatment, psychiatry, dermatology, and HIV prevention and care. The efficiencies we’ve uncovered make lifesaving and life-improving treatments available to people who might otherwise not have access to them.

The result is a system of products and processes that have demonstrated utility for tens of thousands of people and counting. Alto isn’t just convenient; by keeping people well informed about their prescription medications, Alto helps them make the best possible healthcare decisions for themselves and their families. But we’re not stopping there. Alto is poised for growth, and in the coming months and years, we will be rapidly adding to our team to help us build the technology to continue to solve pharmacy’s deep operational issues at scale.

Learn more about our vision, growth trajectory, and the Alto engineering team that makes it all possible.

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