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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

Stephanie Curry is famous at Alto. No, she’s not related to Steph Curry, she’ll say right upfront, but Stephanie is known at work for her joyful, carefree singing that echoes through our Alto Pharmacy headquarters in San Francisco. She brightens our day. And among Alto’s patients, Stephanie is beloved for her reliable, friendly service, delivering medications to their doorsteps — along with big, warm hugs.

Q: What do you do at Alto and how did you learn about Alto?

A: I drive for Alto and deliver medications to patients’ homes, six days a week. I’ve worked all my life from delivering newspapers when I was 11 to being a nursing assistant in home care centers and to driving for Uber. When I heard about Alto, that I could deliver medications to patients, I applied and got the job! I’ve been driving for Alto for almost two years and I love that it gives me space to do my thing and I get to see patients.

Q: Tell us about some of the patients that are most memorable to you?

A: There’s a patient I’ve been delivering medications to for months, and usually it’s a family member or caregiver who answers the door. I see the medical equipment so I figure the patient is ill or bed ridden. But then one day, I drive up to the house and I see this elderly woman, sitting on the porch. It’s the patient and she’s waiting for me! She told me that she hears my friendly voice every time I come and that she wanted to come out to meet me in person and tell me how much she appreciated me. She gave me a big hug and that’s how I started to get to know her.

Editor’s note: At Alto, we’ve heard from countless patients who have also been touched by Stephanie. Not only the patients, but often the patient’s caregivers, children and dogs look forward to Stephanie’s Alto deliveries.

Q: Do you know all your patients by name?

A: I work the East Bay regularly so I get to know the roads, the houses and the patients pretty well. Whenever I see a patient, I always greet them by name, like “Hello, Miss Maria”. No one taught me that — I just think it’s natural really, the only way to communicate with one another. People already have so much going on, having to take medications — they don’t want to feel like another number. So I want them to know that I know them. I love that this company is about dealing with people — it’s personal, you know who you can talk is a live person, you can see their face.

Q: And what makes you memorable to patients?

A: My hugs. A lot of patients ask me for hugs, and I don’t hesitate. Oh, and my car. Patients tell me that when they get a notification from Alto that their delivery is a few minutes away, they look out the window. They always know it’s me when I step out of my shiny, black Lincoln car. I know it’s not a typical car for a courier, but I love it. My husband bought it for me and he’s the love of my life. We were married 31 years and we have three beautiful children together. So I drive that car wherever I go.

Q: What do you do for fun, outside of Alto?

A: I love to play Bingo — I’m the Bingo Queen, I just came back from Vegas. I also love to cook. I used to run a restaurant in Sacramento and my family raves about my Gumbo. I just live, enjoy life, because as I tell my friends and family, you can’t take nothing with you when you leave!

Delivering Care to Patients: An Altoid Profile

Anna left her doctor’s office with a glimmer of hope. For months, Anna had been struggling with digestive issues and now her doctor had suggested they try a promising new medication. Finally, she thought, maybe this new medication could provide some relief and her life could return to normal. But when Anna arrived at her pharmacy, she was shocked to discover the medication would cost $400 per month! The pharmacist at the counter explained that if she couldn’t afford the copay, she would need to call her insurance or her doctor to “figure it out.” Frustrated and overwhelmed, Anna left the pharmacy empty-handed and with the distinct feeling that healthcare had been designed to work against her.

Unfortunately, Anna is not alone in encountering obstacles that prevent her from getting the medication she needs. From the moment we leave the doctor’s office, we are thrust into a maddening, depersonalized system that feels like a big black box. We are left to navigate it all on our own, especially when it comes to medication pricing. 1 in 3 Americans admit that they aren’t taking the medication they need because of cost. This is not only harmful to our long term health as patients, but also a devastating cost to our country. It is estimated that there are 125,000 avoidable deaths per year and nearly $300 billion in downstream medical costs due medication non-adherence. You may have heard stories of diabetic patients who, faced with climbing insulin costs, died from skipping doses or resorting to cheaper alternatives. For these patients and their families, getting the right medication is an issue of life or death. And for many like Anna, it’s, at the very least, very high stakes.

Today, medication pricing is set by multiple stakeholders in a process that is entirely hidden from patients and doctors:

Your employer contracts with a pharmacy benefits manager (or “PBM”, like Caremark, Express Scripts, etc.) whose job is to determine which medications should be covered or not under your insurance plan (even down to the exact dosage and brand that your doctor prescribes).

The PBM negotiates with the drug manufacturers to agree upon a specific price to charge the employer for a medication, the remaining copay for patients, and the PBM’s hefty cut for administering the service. It’s not hard to imagine how commercial incentives might color decisions on which medications are covered and how they are priced.

Drug manufacturers also offer copay assistance programs for select medications, with varying eligibility criteria, but these are marketed primarily through doctors, meaning patients often don’t know these assistance programs exist or if they qualify.

Today, none of this data is transparent or shared. These parties (doctors, drug manufacturers, PBMs) do not have the incentives nor the technology in place to coordinate with one another to act in the patient’s best interest. Drug manufacturers and pharmacies get paid by the medications dispensed, doctors get paid by the appointment/procedure, and PBMs get paid through taking a hefty cut of the negotiated medication price. These parties are naturally incentivized to pursue a path that delivers the highest financial return with the least amount of effort. Sitting in the center of this web, pharmacies are uniquely positioned to coordinate the best outcome for the patient. Traditional retail pharmacies, however, don’t have access to technology solutions that would easily bridge the gap between insurer, manufacturer and physician. It’s no wonder medication prices continue to climb and the process of getting medication remains so inefficient.

At Alto, we asked ourselves, “What if every patient could have a pharmacy expert on standby to help him/her navigate the complex world of medication pricing?”

We believe that pharmacy’s role is to make the process work around patients, rather than asking patients to learn how to work the system. So we built a modern pharmacy software platform that enables our Alto pharmacists, billing specialists and patient advocates to coordinate between doctors and insurance companies to ensure patients have clear choices and transparency on medication pricing.

Alto is the first pharmacy to proactively:

Show patients the price of a medication both with and without insurance, within minutes of receiving their prescription. These prices matter because sometimes the price without insurance is actually cheaper.

Match patients with savings and copay assistance programs offered through drug manufacturers. Often, patients and doctors don’t have time to manually keep track of these programs, so our service automatically searches for eligible programs.

Help patients and doctors navigate the complexities of insurance, whether by identifying an alternative medication that is more affordable under the patient’s plan or helping to petition insurance to cover the medication (a process called Prior Authorization). Compiling all the paperwork and medical history data required by these insurance processes takes up valuable time from doctors (estimated at 20 hours of work per week per doctor). Our technology automates this process so patients can quickly get access to the medications they need.

Here’s what all this means for a patient like Anna:

When Anna told her doctor about the expensive copay, her doctor sent the prescription to Alto. Anna’s doctor knew that Alto would help with the paperwork needed to petition insurance to cover a patient’s medication. Within a few hours, Anna received a notification from Alto that they’d worked with her doctor to start the process with her insurance. In the meantime, Alto had matched her with a program from the drug manufacturer that would reduce her copay so she could get started on her therapy right away. When her first Alto package was delivered that evening, Anna regained that early glimmer of hope, relieved to have the Alto team in her corner. Within days, Anna’s insurance approved the coverage, and Anna has been able to stay on the medication, better managing her symptoms (and her medication costs) for over a year now. Anna has been able to focus on her health and feel some semblance of her new “normal.”

Since Alto Pharmacy opened four years ago, we’ve had the privilege to help hundreds of thousands of patients and physicians. By harnessing the power of our pharmacy team and our technology, patients get access to the best medications, at the best possible prices, delivered to their home the same day. 

We are proud to be cracking open the black box surrounding medication pricing and giving Alto patients a new level of transparency and control in their health journey. And we are hopeful that with increased awareness and patient advocacy, systemic changes are on the way that will help make medications more accessible and affordable for everyone.

Monica Tran has led the Product and Design team at Alto for two years, helping build a suite of products for pharmacists, physicians and patients that allows Alto to break down barriers to medication access and transform the pharmacy experience. She recently transitioned into a leadership development and coaching role, helping to scale Alto’s organization, values and patient experience.

Breaking Open the Black Box of Medication Pricing

Choose when and how you are notified about prescriptions with our Prescriber Notifications feature.

Starting tomorrow, February 14th, AltoMD users have access to improved prescriber-based notification options in AltoMD. These new settings help users manage which patient prescriptions generate email notifications for pharmacy actions.

Control which patient prescriptions generate email alerts when there are pharmacy questions or actions;

Subscribe to updates by the patient or by the prescriber; and

Keep your email inbox clean and focused only on the patients you work with on a daily basis.

Occasionally, Alto will need additional information from a clinic to fill a patient’s prescriptions. For clinics using AltoMD, the Alto team can send brief messages via the portal rather than having to reach out via phone, voicemail or fax. These messages can be quickly responded to in between rooming patients or while handling other administration duties — no more waiting on hold or playing phone tag with the pharmacy!

Notifications allow AltoMD users to receive email alerts when there is a new message requiring the clinic’s attention. To help you limit which patient alerts you receive, AltoMD has offered the ability to subscribe to an individual patient (get alerted for all messages for that specific patient). Our new prescriber-based notifications allow an AltoMD user to subscribe to updates for all patients for a given prescriber (get alerted for all messages for all patients with scripts written by that prescriber).

AltoMD is designed to keep you off the phone, away from the fax machine, and focused on your patients. Our existing patient-based subscription functionality allowed users to get targeted notifications about patients, but required active management in the patient directory to keep up to date on all needed subscriptions. Opting into a prescriber’s notifications means it’s easier to get all updates on the patients you care about, with fewer steps.

Prescriber Notifications: Select which prescribers at your practice you would like to follow; by following or subscribing to a prescriber, the user will receive email alerts when there are pending pharmacy actions requiring attention.

Revamped Settings page: Your user profile and notifications settings are now at the top of the page; click into the “Notifications Settings” module to add (or remove) prescribers that you want to receive updates on.

Revamped Patient Directory filters: Filter the patient directory listing by notification status: all, following, not following; this filter will show all individual patients you have subscribed to, both individually and by prescriber.

AltoMD is a complimentary service that allows prescribers and clinic staff to track prescriptions, view medication histories and message directly with the Alto Pharmacy care team. By streamlining prior authorization workflows and coordinating with insurance companies, AltoMD helps clinical teams stay focused on patient care.

If you have any questions, feedback or ideas, please email providersuccess@alto.com or reach out to your Partnerships Manager.

More Choices and Control With New AltoMD Notifications

Mattieu Gamache-Asselin, CEO & Co-founder

Today, we are excited to announce a $250 million Series D funding round, bringing our total funding to over $350M. We are honored to welcome Softbank to our team of investors and thrilled that our existing investors — including Greenoaks, Jackson Square Ventures, OliveTree Capital, and Zola Global — have reinvested to accelerate our mission to bring the Alto experience to 100 million people by 2025.

Over the past four years, we’ve delivered over 1 million prescriptions directly to our patients’ doors, and created a service that makes our patients happier — our patient NPS is over 80 for the fourth year in a row — and healthier — our medication adherence rate is 77% compared to an industry average of 50%.

This has been possible because we’ve learned from experienced community pharmacists, we’ve reimagined and rebuilt the underlying infrastructure of pharmacy, and, most important of all, we’ve built an amazing and diverse team that truly lives out our values every day. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I’d get to work on such a meaningful mission with such a genuinely passionate and talented team. Whenever I have a tough day and need a boost of energy, I walk through our pharmacies and look around in awe at all the hard work, care and perseverance that goes into making this type of service possible for our patients — from our pharmacists and patient care champions to our couriers and product managers, all working together.

This new round of funding will enable us to take everything we’ve built and learned over the past four years and bring it to more people and more patient demographics. I’ve seen many companies scale too quickly, hire too fast, and in that process lose sight of the heart of the company’s values and mission. What is most important to me as Alto enters this next chapter is that we maintain the same empathy and human connection we’ve had since we were a small community pharmacy.

I want to thank our team for joining us on this mission, to thank our investors for believing in us, and most importantly, I want to thank our patients for reminding me every day of why we’re on this journey.

Alto’s launch in the Seattle market extends our industry-leading patient care model to Washington state.

Starting Tuesday, January 21, fertility patients in the Seattle metro area can now choose Alto’s same-day doorstep delivery and have their medications delivered by our Alto team.

Our evening delivery windows allow patients to more easily plan to be available to receive their packages. Patients schedule deliveries to the location of their choice — home, work or hotel — and on the day of their choosing. They can even track our couriers in real time on our mobile app. Next-day mail order service is also available for patients outside of the courier zone.

Courier delivery windows
Monday — Friday: 6–9 pm PT
Saturday: 2–5 pm PT

Walk-in hours
Monday — Friday: 12:30–7 pm PT
Saturday: 10–5 pm PT (closed on Sundays)

Fertility patients interested in using Alto’s services for their medication needs can ask their care team to send all prescriptions to Alto Pharmacy (via ePrescribe, phone or fax).

Fertility is Complicated. Your Medications Don’t Have to Be.

Alto knows fertility pharmacy. With more than 15,000 patients served, we understand the treatment complexities and concerns of fertility patients. Our dedicated patient care team is available in the evenings and on weekends to walk you through your first injection or answer questions about medication storage, dosing or interactions. Our fertility deliveries include all necessary ancillary supplies, such as syringes, sharps container and alcohol swabs, and are carefully packaged for temperature control. Delivery is always free.

Alto will automatically connect you with all manufacturer-sponsored financial assistance programs for qualifying prescriptions. Alto also works with many fertility benefits programs, including ProgynyRx, and many leading financing and loan providers. If we cannot bill your insurance, we’ll find you a pharmacy that can.

At this time, Alto is only offering fertility medication services in the Seattle market. Any updates to service areas and offerings will be available at alto.com/locations.

Alto Pharmacy Launches Local Daily Delivery in Seattle Metro Area

Healthcare is complicated, but managing your medications doesn’t have to be.

With holiday travel, family engagements, and end of year insurance submissions, December brings with it both excitement for the new year and a lot of housekeeping. Alto takes the hassle out of pharmacy by making pharmacy convenient and fast — no more standing in line or adding an extra stop to your evening commute. Get a question answered or schedule your next medication delivery with a few quick clicks online or over the phone with the assistance of our friendly Care team.

We’re always adding new features to both the mobile and desktop app experiences to save you valuable time, give you control over your medications, and provide transparency into what really goes into pharmacy. Cross “pharmacy” off of your year-end to-do list with the newest features in our app.

Download your FSA receipts: No need to keep a paper receipts folder or try to remember which medications you filled when. Alto keeps track of the details so you don’t have to. Your year-end FSA receipts are now available for easy download from both the desktop and mobile apps under “Payment Details.”

Set up a linked bank account: Alto’s commitment to transparency means more choices and more control. In addition to payment via credit or debit card, you can link a bank account to automatically save 1% off every order.

Manage your family’s medications: Eliminate extra trips to the pharmacy and confusion around refill cycles. Set up a family account to view and manage medications for you and your family members from a single account:

View medications for your whole family from one med list

Schedule medications for any family member in one delivery

Request refills and prescription renewals on behalf of your family members

To manage your family members’ medications, you’ll need to link them to your account. Contact our patient care team at 1 (800) 874–5881 to quickly get set up.

New to Alto? Here’s what you can expect from the full Alto app experience:

View all of your current and archived prescriptions along with detailed medication information

Access price information for each medication, including insurance, coupon, and cash pay prices so you always know your options

Schedule deliveries for the date and delivery window of your choice — delivery is always free!

Request refills and enroll in our auto-refill program

Securely message a pharmacist with questions, including in the evenings and on weekends

We want to know what you think about these new features! Email us at feedback@alto.com.

Take Control of Your Prescriptions With New Features in the Alto App

Expansion of daily courier delivery to Sacramento and San Diego means greater control and reliability for fertility patients across California.

Fertility patients in the greater Sacramento and San Diego metro areas can now choose Alto’s same-day doorstep delivery and have their medications delivered by our Alto team.

Our evening delivery windows allow patients to more easily plan to be available to receive their packages. Patients schedule deliveries to the location of their choice — home, work or hotel — and on the day of their choosing. They can even track our couriers in real time on our mobile app. Next-day mail order service is also available for patients outside of the courier zone and for Saturday deliveries.

San Diego courier delivery windows:
Monday — Friday: 6–9 pm PT
Saturday — Sunday: Not available at launch

Sacramento courier delivery windows:
Monday — Friday: 7–10 pm PT
Saturday- Sunday: Not available at launch

At this time, Alto is only offering fertility medication services in the Sacramento and San Diego markets. Any updates to service offerings will be available at alto.com/locations.

Alto Pharmacy Expands Local Courier Delivery to Sacramento 
and San Diego

Alto’s launch in the Denver-Boulder market marks Alto’s first courier-based expansion outside of the West Coast.

Starting today, October 14, fertility patients in the Denver-Boulder metro area can now choose Alto’s same-day doorstep delivery and have their medications delivered by our Alto team.

Courier delivery windows:
Monday — Friday: 6:30–9:30 pm MT for Denver metro area, 7–10 pm MT for Boulder
Saturday: 2–5 pm MT for Denver metro area, 2:30–5:30 pm MT for Boulder

Walk-in hours:
Monday — Friday: 1- 6 pm MT
Saturday: 9:30 am — 6 pm MT (closed on Sundays)

At this time, Alto is only offering fertility medication services in the Denver-Boulder market. Our team will be revisiting the northern boundaries of our courier zone in the coming weeks; any updates to service areas will be available at alto.com/locations.

Alto Pharmacy Launches Local Daily Delivery in Denver-Boulder Metro Area

How My Experience as an IVF Coordinator Showed Me the Importance of Alto’s Care Model

I knew from a very young age that I wanted to work with moms and babies. My mother ran a daycare from our home throughout my childhood, and for my sixth grade report on “what I want to be when I grow up,” I interviewed a well baby RN at a local hospital. After completing my Bachelor’s degree, I started working as front desk staff at a fertility clinic and I knew immediately that I had found my spot. I could work with soon-to-be moms and new moms every day.

I quickly shifted from the front desk to being a Medical Assistant for a physician where I was able to participate in ultrasounds, retrievals and transfers. The first time I was in a pregnancy ultrasound and heard a baby’s heartbeat, I was in tears and overcome with emotion. Eventually I transitioned into the role of IVF Coordinator where I was a key part of a patient’s — and their partner’s — journey to building a family.

I really got to know my patients — in fertility, you become a trusted confidant. Their loss is your loss, and their win is your win. While you might not bring your work home physically, emotionally the job never really leaves you — IVF coordinator was the most emotionally taxing job I’ll ever have. But each time we received a positive pregnancy test, it made up for all the ups and downs.

Alto’s model shouldn’t be so revolutionary, but it is. Clinics and patients don’t have to be okay with today’s standard pharmacy experience — Alto offers a fundamentally better model.

Fertility pharmacy plays a key role in a patient’s fertility journey. Medications need to arrive on time, in the correct assortment, with all necessary ancillary supplies. Often, the decision to change a dose or initiate a trigger shot means that medications are needed that same day or on the weekend. As an IVF coordinator, helping my patients make a decision about pharmacy was tricky — each pharmacy option offered some of the service qualities I was looking for, but no pharmacy offered all of the things I wanted for my patients. Remembering which pharmacy checked which boxes was really challenging.

It was so important to me that my patients were taken care of and receiving the highest quality of care. When they had questions, I was always available and responsive, even in the evenings and on weekends. What was most frustrating about working with fertility pharmacies was that when I’d send a prescription out, I’d have no control over the quality of the patient’s experience with the pharmacy.

For my patients, I wanted a pharmacy option that was accessible, responsive, cost conscious, and accountable for making sure nothing was getting lost or off track. For my clinic team, I wanted a pharmacy partner that didn’t require me to micromanage everything about a patient’s medications. I hated being the middle person between the patient and the pharmacy. The first time a pharmacy [Alto] came in and told me I could send any patient with any insurance to them and they would triage it, I thought, “We’ll send everything to them.”

Alto Pharmacy’s patient care model checked all those boxes. When I first heard about their same day delivery, evening and weekend hours and benefits coordination, it sounded too good to be true. Having access to a local fertility pharmacy with same day delivery was simply unheard of.

But if this was all true, it was clearly something that I wanted to be a part of. I knew from my experience as an IVF coordinator that this model served a crucial need for both patients and their care teams. I wanted to bring my knowledge and experience to help make the Alto care model even better than it already was.

What I quickly learned after joining Alto Pharmacy to help build partnerships with fertility clinics was that while same day delivery is extremely practical and necessary in fertility, it’s our patient care team that is the most standout quality. Our patient care staff have the same drive and commitment to helping build families that initially drew me to work in fertility. They genuinely care about the success of the treatment and making sure that the patients are being taken care of. This focus on the patient is unmatched in the pharmacy space — fertility pharmacy is not a truly personalized experience anywhere else but Alto.

The patient care team consistently goes above and beyond to make sure that patients have what they need, when they need it, so that cycles aren’t interrupted. Those same-day medication changes and trigger shot decisions mean that our team is processing late notice prescriptions and frequently staying late to get deliveries out the door. Many members of our patient care team have even driven medications direct to patient’s homes so that cycles stay on track. They know how much going the extra mile is going to relieve the patient’s stress.

What I like to tell people is that we haven’t found some magical secret sauce at Alto — we didn’t create texting, or mobile apps — but pharmacy has been behind the times for so long compared to many other industries and especially within healthcare. Alto’s model shouldn’t be so revolutionary, but it is. Clinics and patients don’t have to be okay with today’s standard pharmacy experience — Alto offers a fundamentally better model.

Alto is the West Coast’s leading fertility pharmacy with more than 15,000 patients served. We’re open evenings and weekends, offer free delivery seven days a week, and will always work to help you find the best price. Interested in using Alto’s services for your fertility medications? Ask your care team to send your prescriptions to Alto or give us a call at 1 (800) 874–5881.

Tina Simon is a Fertility Partnerships Manager for Alto Pharmacy in the San Francisco Bay area.

The View from Both Sides of the Fertility Pharmacy Experience

True visibility with AltoMD’s improved patient profile pages

Starting today, August 13th, prescribers and clinics using Alto’s AltoMD platform have access to a new feature set designed to help clinical partners understand the current status of any medication sent to Alto and exactly what will happen next. Track a medication as it moves through the full Alto workflow (now with more detail!), view patient contact logs, and drill down into medication histories.

AltoMD is designed to keep you off the phone, away from the fax machine and focused on your patients. Our previous patient profile pages answered some questions about medications but didn’t go far enough in helping clinic teams understand exactly where each prescription falls in the fulfillment process or how to help move things along. These improvements allow AltoMD users to:

See how and when Alto is contacting our shared patients;

Determine exactly where a prescription is in the Alto fulfillment workflow;

Quickly understand any blockers to getting the prescription filled; and

New Patient Contact Log: See when and how Alto is communicating with our shared patients, including text, email, phone calls and in-app messages.

Revamped Patient Medication List: Filter and sort by medication name, fills remaining and delivery status.

New Medication Detail View: View the current active prescription details, progress through the Alto fulfillment process, related inactive prescriptions and detailed medication history.

You can also message the Alto pharmacy team with patient specific questions and subscribe to updates from the patient profile page.

AltoMD is a complimentary service that allows prescribers and clinic staff to track prescriptions, view medication histories and message directly with the Alto Pharmacy care team. By streamlining prior authorization workflows and coordinating with insurance companies, AltoMD helps clinical teams stay off the phone, away from the fax machine and focused instead on patient care.

Track Every Prescription Through Every Step

How Alto Pharmacy provided support and peace of mind during my embryo freezing process

I’m 33 years old and have been married for three years. I don’t have any children yet, but have always known I wanted a family. I have spent much of my career working in healthcare and have most recently worked at an education startup. I’m passionate about doing work that empowers women.

Many of my friends have gone through the egg freezing process, and my husband and I visited a clinic last year to learn more about our own fertility health and to explore the option of egg freezing as a future backup plan. The clinic we chose uses Alto for their fertility pharmacy services and referred me once we decided to go through a round of embryo freezing.

I had a great experience with Alto. The entire journey of learning about fertility preservation, deciding whether or not to go through with a procedure, and then starting the process is really stressful and often left me feeling like I needed a lot more information and guidance than was readily available. With Alto, everything about getting my prescriptions filled and finding answers to my questions was straightforward and dependable.

At my very first appointment, the clinical team decided to start me on medications that same night. I signed up with Alto, and they delivered my medications same-day within the span of a few hours. The customer service reps at Alto were really helpful and worked with an urgency that I appreciated given how out of control I felt in that initial phase of the treatment plan.

What I liked most about Alto was how dependable they were. When you’re going through a fertility preservation process, your prescription and medication needs change every few days for the duration of the treatment. There were several times where I got a prescription in the morning from my physician and needed to get the delivery that same day. Each time, Alto did a great job of making sure the medication was processed, scheduled for delivery and delivered on time. I didn’t have to stress that something would go wrong and the whole process would be messed up.

I also found that I could rely on Alto to help fill knowledge gaps about what was happening with my care. Each delivery included documents to explain exactly what the medications were for, something that wasn’t always clear when I got a prescription from the doctor. I appreciated Alto’s focus on customer service. They proactively reached out to give me updates about what to expect next, ensure my questions were answered, and even did small gestures like including a few caramels in each delivery that, while small, were appreciated.

I used to have a chronic disease, chronic idiopathic urticaria (hives), that required a specialty medication, and I had a really difficult time dealing with pharmacies and ensuring I got my medication correctly. I had to see one doctor to prescribe the medication, go in person to pick up the medication at a specialty pharmacy and then drive it in a cooler to a second, different doctor to administer it. With Alto, it was so much easier and straightforward to make sure I received my medications when I needed them, without having to leave home.

Alto was easy to work with and dependable which is so important and helpful. While the outcomes of my procedure were not what I had hoped for, I have no complaints at all with my experience with Alto. I would definitely recommend Alto to a friend considering egg freezing or IVF treatments.

Alto is the West Coast’s leading fertility pharmacy with more than 15,000 patients served. We’re open evenings and weekends, offer free delivery seven days a week, and will always work to help you find the best price. Interested in using Alto’s services for your fertility medications? Ask your doctor to send your prescriptions to Alto or give us a call at 1 (800) 874–5881.

This post was written by Rebecca G., a San Francisco Bay area operations and community builder, and Alto fertility patient.

On August 1st, 2015, I was so excited to move into my shiny, new office: a storage closet. I looked across to my co-founder, Jamie, and wondered how two engineers from Facebook ended up in the back of a small, family-run pharmacy in the Mission.

Earlier that summer, Jamie and I had left our jobs to start a company that could create lasting change in the world and have massive impact on people’s lives. We were drawn to healthcare and shocked to learn that in the U.S., 50% of people don’t get or take their medications as prescribed. This problem, referred to as medication non-adherence, is one of the country’s leading causes of hospitalization and deaths, and is often due to the high costs and friction in the pharmacy experience. We’d both been at big, retail pharmacies and saw how broken the system was — deeply inefficient and in many ways, inhumane. So, we decided to start by tackling pharmacy.

We ran some Facebook ads, offering a pretty simple service that would pick up your prescriptions and deliver them to your doorstep. That first week, we succeeded in delivering medications to our first happy, paying customers. We thought speed was the key benefit, so we named the company “ScriptDash.” Little did we know, we would need to build so much more (including a new company name, Alto — a nod to a higher, elevated experience).

We heard about a small, beloved community pharmacy, called AG. Located at Army & Guerrero in the Mission district, AG had been owned by pharmacist Vivian Cheung for over 30 years. We befriended Vivian, and she let us follow her around and learn. As weeks went by, we became more curious and amazed by all the backend steps required to make things work — not only behind the counter at the pharmacy, but also between the doctor, the insurance companies and the patient. Vivian was very kind and patiently explained every step to her two newest ‘interns.’

One day, we were watching Vivian prepare a prescription for a patient, Walter, when she noticed that the copay increased from last month’s copay by a few dollars. Vivian knew that for Walter, a few dollars would matter to him. We watched Vivian pick up the phone to call Walter and explain the copay change. Walter was thankful for Vivian’s call and ultimately came in to pick up his meds that evening. It was that day when I realized that what patients need is for their pharmacist to really know them — the way Vivian knew Walter’s health conditions, medication history and his preferences — so that pharmacists can help patients navigate the complexities of healthcare and get the medication they need. I was excited to think about how technology, alongside a caring, patient-focused pharmacy team, could help us bring this type of experience to millions of patients who desperately need an expert pharmacist like Vivian in their corner. It quickly became clear to us that what patients needed was way more than just delivery, that in order to do this right, we needed to be a fully-fledged pharmacy.

Looking back, one of the most important moments in Alto’s history was raising enough capital to purchase AG pharmacy, allowing us to continue partnering with Vivian and her team. We were fully aligned on our mission, and couldn’t have imagined doing this with anyone else.

Being fully immersed in the pharmacy and working alongside pharmacists every day allowed us to more deeply understand the issues with the existing pharmacy experience and why so many patients don’t get or take their medications as needed. We quickly built out our team, bringing together even more expertise across both technology and healthcare, grounded by the core values and caring ways we learned from AG. That first year, we also built the core pieces of our technology stack — our pharmacy operating system, our physician collaboration tool and an app for Alto patients.

Fast-forward to today. We’ve far outgrown that storage closet. We now serve tens of thousands of patients across multiple cities and multiple specialties, all made possible by our incredible team of nearly 300 and the technology platform we’ve built. We’re able to better educate patients about their medication and pricing, deliver medication to their doorstep and provide expert pharmacist advice on an ongoing basis. We are thrilled when customers tell us that they are happy (our NPS satisfaction rate is 80+, compared to pharmacy chains with 5 points) and healthier (we’ve seen our patient’s medication adherence rise to 70% from the industry norm of 50%). That first year with AG really shaped our vision for what a great pharmacy could be and the type of multidisciplinary team we’d need to build it. It’s amazing to think about how far we’ve come, but in many ways, it still feels like the early days. There’s so much more we need to do to bring this type of caring, community pharmacy experience to all the patients who need and deserve it. We are still just getting started!

Blog

Delivering Care to Patients: An Altoid Profile

Breaking Open the Black Box of Medication Pricing

More Choices and Control With New AltoMD Notifications

Bringing Alto to a Neighborhood Near You

Alto Pharmacy Launches Local Daily Delivery in Seattle Metro Area

Take Control of Your Prescriptions With New Features in the Alto App

Alto Pharmacy Expands Local Courier Delivery to Sacramento
and San Diego

Alto Pharmacy Launches Local Daily Delivery in Denver-Boulder Metro Area

The View from Both Sides of the Fertility Pharmacy Experience

Track Every Prescription Through Every Step

My Fertility Preservation Story

The Founding Story of Alto

Switch to a better pharmacy.

Blog

Delivering Care to Patients: An Altoid Profile

Breaking Open the Black Box of Medication Pricing

More Choices and Control With New AltoMD Notifications

Bringing Alto to a Neighborhood Near You

Alto Pharmacy Launches Local Daily Delivery in Seattle Metro Area

Take Control of Your Prescriptions With New Features in the Alto App

Alto Pharmacy Expands Local Courier Delivery to Sacramento and San Diego

Alto Pharmacy Launches Local Daily Delivery in Denver-Boulder Metro Area

The View from Both Sides of the Fertility Pharmacy Experience

Track Every Prescription Through Every Step

My Fertility Preservation Story

The Founding Story of Alto

Switch to a better pharmacy.

Alto Pharmacy Expands Local Courier Delivery to Sacramento
and San Diego