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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.

Everyone knows the pharmacy plays an important role in the healthcare system. Every one of us, in our lifetime, will need to see a doctor and inevitably at some point we will also need prescription medication.

"How Do You Make Money?"

Everyone knows the pharmacy plays an important role in the healthcare system. Every one of us, in our lifetime, will need to see a doctor and inevitably at some point we will also need prescription medication. Today, when we need that medication, most of us simply tell the doctor to send it to the local pharmacy that serves more as a convenience store than a healthcare source.

When we speak to medical providers about our pharmacy (one that is not a convenience store and only focuses on offering the highest-quality patient care), the doctors always scratch their head and asks, “how do you guys make any money?” As much as we all interact with and rely on a pharmacy we often don’t understand its business model. “How can they make any money if last time I came in I didn’t pay anything for my prescription medication?”

The pharmacy fills a bottle with the prescribed medication.

The pharmacy bills the patient’s insurance for the medication.

The difference between what the pharmacy paid for the medication and what the insurance company reimbursed for the medication is profit.

Even though you had a zero dollar copay your insurance typically reimbursed the pharmacy around $60 for that prescription and they made (typically) about $12 in gross profit margin. Imagine now that you are a patient that takes 3 prescriptions per month. That’s $180 in recurring monthly revenue that the pharmacy gets every time you pick up your medication.

“I thought they made all of their money on the other stuff they sell.”

Even though the actual pharmacy portion often takes up the smallest part of a retail store like a Walgreens, it typically generates two-thirds of the store’s total revenue. Those medications make a lot of money for the pharmacy. In fact, the US consumes almost $1B per day of prescription medication (12.9M daily prescriptions).

“If a pharmacy makes so much money, why is it so bad? Why is it almost universally disliked and a huge source of friction for medical providers, patients and even insurance companies?”

Well… large-chain pharmacies have realized that they don’t have to be good. This is because they have a clever way of acquiring customers which doesn’t require them to compete on quality.

“What is this clever way of acquiring customers?”

They’re on every corner! AND they sell everything we might need. Need household goods? A high-calorie snack? A cold soda? Lightbulbs?… Great! They can help us with that. As long as we go there for our convenience goods, they know that when a doctor asks, “where do I send this high-priced prescription?” patients are likely to say, send it to that convenience store right by my house where I get all of my last-minute needs taken care of (even though I really loathe dealing with their pharmacy). Where else are we going to go? Aren’t all pharmacies the same?

There are roughly 120 pharmacies in the city of San Francisco. A city that only houses 800,000 people. Each pharmacy is about 6,000 square feet and is often positioned on the most high-priced and high-trafficked real estate in the city.

We believe that you only need one pharmacy to service the entire Bay Area. The medication should come to the patient (not the other way around) and that pharmacy should compete on quality of care (outcomes). We call it The Modern Pharmacy. In order to improve patient outcomes The Modern Pharmacy should work closely with doctors, insurance companies and patients to provide a frictionless healthcare experience. No need to build hundreds of storefronts or lure patients in with convenience-goods. Just focusing on being the best pharmacy allows us to work with doctors to improve patient outcomes and advance healthcare into the modern era, profitably.

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

ScriptDash Appoints Dr. Mike Cunningham to Board of Advisors

"How Do You Make Money?"

My First Week at ScriptDash

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