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Alto Pharmacy Technician

Alto Pharmacist

It’s official: Alto Pharmacy is a great place to work! We’re honored to join the community of Great Place to Work-Certified™ companies based on team member feedback and a rigorous assessment of our company’s culture and benefits.

Join us in delivering our industry-leading pharmacy care to millions of people across the country. As a member of the team, you’ll play an integral role in improving our customers’ quality of life and redefining what’s possible in pharmacy. 

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Read the latest Alto blog posts covering healthcare, family health, managing diseases, and other Alto highlights.

Blog | Alto Pharmacy

Women Leading the Way

On International Women’s Day, we’d like to celebrate the women of Alto. Every day, they care for patients, fill prescriptions, build products, and drive growth.

By the numbers, 63% of our employees, 40% of the executive team, and 60% of people leaders on product and engineering are women. In comparison, 20% of tech jobs are held by women and only 11 percent of executive positions at Silicon Valley companies.

This amazing representation was made possible by the company mission and values. The founders recognized that improving the pharmacy experience for a diverse population of patients meant Alto had to be a diverse company, capable of understanding and empathizing with everyone we serve.

Recruiting this talented mix of people has been one of our greatest successes, and today, our team has a broad representation of age, gender, race, sexual orientation, and socio-economic status. Diversity and inclusion is never a solved problem. We still and always will have room to improve, and will continue working hard to ensure D&I are prioritized as we continue to grow.

Focus at Alto: Providing the best care to Alto’s patients

Why did you join Alto? I was originally drawn to Alto for the opportunity to work at a pharmacy that was questioning the status quo and because, quite frankly, I could not possibly fathom how a pharmacy could have so many positive Yelp! reviews and I needed to see it with my own eyes. I quickly learned that the “Patients Come First” mentality was not just for show — it is brought to life every day through our incredible team and serves as the North Star for every strategic decision we make as a company.

Background: CVS Health, Walgreens, Northeastern

Focus at Alto: Keeping patient and provider information secure

Why did you join Alto? As a parent and patient, I am constantly frustrated by how hard it is to interact with doctors and data, in the name of security and privacy. I believe that we can secure patient data, protect their privacy and still make care accessible and convenient. I joined Alto Pharmacy because their passion for patients aligned so well with this belief. Alto feels like the kind of place I can be impactful. Also, the day I interviewed, they had a holiday cookie exchange and I’m a sucker for homemade baked goods.

Background: Mango Health, HP, Fortify Software, MIT

Focus at Alto: Building products that simplify medication management and improve health outcomes

Why did you join Alto? I love working on complex problems and creating user-friendly products to improve people’s lives. Everyone is a patient at some point in their lives, and we can make the experience so much better! The team here rallies around that mission, and approaches each decision with openness, rigorous intellectual honesty, and the desire to improve patients’ lives.

Background: Tesla, Boku, Intuit, QuestBridge, Stanford

FRANCES SCHENDLE, General Manager of Fertility

Focus at Alto: Developing and growing Alto’s Fertility Services

Why did you join Alto? In all my years in healthcare, I have never heard of a pharmacy creating an awesome experience for patients and clinicians! I wanted to be a part of this team’s mission to make healthcare simpler and more affordable for patients. The fertility space is a particularly meaningful area for me, as it is growing quickly but is still such a confusing and expensive journey. I believe Alto’s technology and dedicated fertility team are making this a more positive experience, and I’m excited to share that with more women and families.

Focus at Alto: Building products that transform pharmacy operations

Why did you join Alto? The two most important factors for me in a career move are 1) a clear, compelling company mission and 2) a strong yet humble team. When I met the Alto team, I was thrilled to find not only these attributes, but so much more to love. The founders set out to solve a hard problem, bought a brick and mortar pharmacy to learn the ropes, developed empathy with doctors, pharmacists and patients, and then built products that solved some of their thorniest problems. This approach demonstrates a hard-to-find mix of drive, fearlessness, humility and talent that I saw in droves as I met the rest of the Alto team. As someone who believes healthcare has to be so much better, I’m thrilled to spend my day contributing to that mission, with a team that inspires me… and shares lots of laughs every day!

Background: Granular, Inkling, BrightRoll, Apple, MIT, Berkeley

Empowering Patients By Accelerating Healthcare Innovation

Mattieu Gamache-Asselin, CEO & Co-founder

Editor's Note: This post was updated on November 8, 2021, to reflect the rebrand of AltoMD to Alto Connect.

Today, I’m proud to announce Alto’s Series C round of $50 million. Over the past three years, we’ve proven that Alto’s model works for doctors and patients alike, reducing administration time for physicians and improving drug adherence rates for patients. This new funding will enable us to expand, reaching even more patients, and to further develop our full-stack platform, driving better health outcomes at a lower cost.

Alto removes the complexity from prescriptions to improve patients’ quality of life. Every prescription requires coordination among doctors, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and of course the patient. Traditional brick-and-mortar pharmacies depend on fax, phone and paper, which causes delays, errors in fulfillment, poor adherence rates, and 20 hours of administrative work a week per physician.

We’ve reimagined and completely rebuilt the pharmacy infrastructure to eradicate these problems. Through our provider platform (Alto Connect) and pharmacy management software, doctors and insurers spend less time on administration and more time on patient care. For patients, we offer free same-day prescription delivery, but more importantly, cost transparency, personalized in-app and phone support, and faster coordination with doctors and insurance companies to get patients the care they need. Learn more about our app.

The typical Silicon Valley playbook is to enter many new markets rapidly, throw money at problems, and figure things out on the fly. That’s never been Alto’s approach. Because we’re working with critical, life-saving medications, messing up is not an option. We’ve diligently, methodically built robust systems to make certain we leave no patient behind, and we’ll keep that mentality as we expand. Now that we’ve built our critical foundations — the platforms and clinical expertise — it’s time to scale.

Geographic expansion
We want to make sure all of America can benefit from the Alto experience. Last month, we opened our HQ2 in Denver, where we’ve already hired 60 employees across patient care, pharmacy and clinical operations, as a stepping stone to nationwide expansion.

Therapeutic area expansion
So far, we’ve focused on deeply understanding and serving the retail, dermatology, fertility, biologics, and HIV markets. We’re now bringing the same empathy and customized service to autoimmune, endocrinology, and cardiology — areas where patients are frequently overwhelmed with logistics, paperwork and side effects, and where Alto could offer deep value as a trusted partner.

Pharmacy represents 10% of healthcare spending, a $3.3 trillion market. Most pharmacies focus on just capturing as much of that 10% as possible. A select few are working to eliminate the ineffective portions of pharmacy spending. But even they look at the pharmacy spending in isolation.

The truth is, pharmacy shouldn’t be viewed as a disjoint piece. At Alto, we believe better pharmacy will make all of healthcare more effective and reduce healthcare spending overall. We’ve already seen progress — for instance, Alto’s primary adherence rate is 40% higher than the industry average.

From patients, we’ve heard, “Being able to speak to an Alto pharmacist directly allowed me to figure out how my drugs were interacting and causing painful side effects.” Some patients are cost-sensitive and consider skipping the medications that manage their chronic conditions and prevent hospitalizations. We’ve helped by delivering $11 million in medication savings to our patients so far.

From doctors, a common refrain is: “This is the first time my patients have talked to me positively about a pharmacy, and it’s the first time I can actually see what happens to a prescription after I write it.” This experience is why doctors have been the primary fuel of Alto’s growth. UCSF, One Medical, Stanford, and over 10,000 other providers recommend Alto as their preferred pharmacy.

This early progress is energizing, and only possible because of the dedication of Alto’s hardworking team, investors, and partners. Thank you all! The feedback I’m getting from the health ecosystem is even more inspiring — that our potential is nothing short of transformative for our patients and healthcare as a whole. As far as we’ve come, we’re only just getting started.

Rapidly Growing San Francisco-based Startup Teams Up with Specialty Pharmaceuticals Veteran to Build the Modern Pharmacy

ScriptDash Appoints Dr. Mike Cunningham to Board of Advisors

SAN FRANCISCO, CA; November 3rd, 2016 — ScriptDash Pharmacy, a health-tech startup focused on building the modern pharmacy, announced today that Dr. Mike Cunningham has joined the one year old startup’s Board of Advisors.

Dr. Cunningham was most recently Vice President and General Manager, GPO Services, for McKesson Specialty Health (MSH), a business unit of the McKesson Corporation. There, he oversaw day-to-day business operations and long-term strategic planning for MSH’s group purchasing organizations, Onmark and Unity. Dr. Cunningham has deep expertise in healthcare having spent more than 30 years structuring, developing, and implementing relationships with pharmaceutical companies on behalf of practices and pharmacies.

“Dr. Cunningham has devoted his entire career to oncology and has accomplished remarkable feats in the industry. His reputation precedes him. We are excited to work with Mike as we build the pharmacy of tomorrow together.” — Vlad Blumen, Co-Founder

At ScriptDash, Dr. Cunningham will be a key advisor and partner in securing access to new, limited distribution specialty medications.

“I’ve been very impressed with the senior management team and their desire to significantly improve the patient pharmacy experience through modernization” — Dr. Mike Cunningham

ScriptDash Pharmacy is a year-old software startup based in the historic Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco. ScriptDash is disrupting the CVS and Walgreens dominated pharmacy industry of big box retail pharmacy chains by offering free same-day delivery of prescriptions.

ScriptDash is a modern pharmacy that delivers your prescriptions, same-day, to your home or office. We’ve automated most of what your local pharmacy does and we deliver. It’s pretty rad.

My First Week at ScriptDash

Beginnings are special. After four amazing years building the Optimizely rocketship, I’ve begun a new journey with ScriptDash.

A Slack bot posts every NPS survey response we get from a patient that’s just received a delivery. Throughout the day these will light up Slack, and they’re a joy to read.

What’s struck me most this week is how deeply everyone here cares about patient outcomes and improving healthcare. The current system is outdated. Broken. It not only causes millions of headaches, it also costs thousands of lives. Hundreds of thousands, in fact.

When people don’t take their medication as directed (or at all), the results can sometimes be fatal. This is called non-adherence. The CDC says non-adherence causes 125,000 deaths annually, or ~340 deaths per day. How does this happen?

The patient isn’t able to get to a pharmacy on time, safely, or at all.

The patient can’t afford the copay because their doctor inadvertently selected a drug that wasn’t covered by their insurance.

The patient can’t afford their meds because the pharmacy didn’t apply a coupon making the drug free or affordable. This coupon process is murky and manual.

The drug prescribed isn’t covered by insurance and requires special approval (“prior authorization”) from the insurance provider. Either the pharmacy or the doctor dropped the ball in this manual, shitty process, and the patient never got their prescription.

The patient didn’t take their prescription as-directed because they were given multiple meds with different instructions (this can be confusing!)

ScriptDash is a pharmacy built for 2016, from first principles, as a software company. We’ve built our own Pharmacy Management System that lets us solve patient and doctor issues that have been lingering for decades.

We automagically find and apply relevant manufacturer drug coupons, prior authorizations, and renewals. If there’s an alternative medication that’s cheaper or covered by your insurance, we’ll contact your doctor to switch the prescription.

We offer same-day delivery to your home or office via our own fleet of in-house couriers so you don’t have to burn time at the pharmacy waiting. Many people can’t get to a pharmacy safely or at all because of their work hours, and this makes a huge difference in their lives.

Others had same-day surgery or are suffering from ailments that limit mobility or energy.

We offer SmartPacks that group multiple drugs into easy-to-take little packets. It’s pretty cool.

When I’ve explained ScriptDash to a few friends, they think we’re just picking up your prescription from a regular pharmacy. We are the pharmacy! No pickup! Just delivery! From our pharmacy!

We love software engineering, operations, design, pharmacy, and pizza. Every other Thursday we volunteer at the nearby SF Marin Food Bank. This week our group and a number of others re-packaged some 3,000 lbs of cashews. Hella nuts. It feels good to do good.

Most of the hard work lies ahead of us. We’re looking for a few more good humans that want to explore the intersection of software, logistics, and healthcare. Check us out or say hi the cool way:

// Send a POST to https://www.scriptdash.com/careers/apply
{
  "name": "Your name",
  "about": "Tell us about yourself!",
  "email": "Your email address",
  "links": [ "link to your resume", "link to anything else cool" ]
}

Blog

Women Leading the Way

Empowering Patients By Accelerating Healthcare Innovation

ScriptDash Appoints Dr. Mike Cunningham to Board of Advisors

My First Week at ScriptDash

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