An online pharmaceutical telehealth business based in St. Petersburg has seen a significant spike in business brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mark Engelen, cofounder of Rx Live, which provides clinical pharmacists to patients through their doctors, said it has been an exciting year in that respect. “Being a remote telehealth-based business, we’ve basically grown 10-fold since this time last year when we were just getting going.”
The company is primarily a B2B business model that sells the capability to physicians to integrate clinical pharmacists into the services they offer their respective patients.
“Most pharmacist involvement is in a retail setting with 30-second interactions or on behalf of a payer, like Blue Cross Blue Shield might have a team of pharmacists to reach out to do complex medication management,” Engelen explained. The doctor is not integrated in the process, even though the physician is the most trusted partner. Advice from a pharmacist, unless contextualized by the physician, does not result in getting patients to be more prudent about taking their medication, he said.
Rx Live does integrate the physician in the process, Engelen said. It reviews patient medications and makes recommendations to the doctor, who can then change a prescription, if necessary. Or if a patient is taking a pill three times a day and it’s more efficient and cost-effective to take it once a day, Rx Live pharmacists can make that recommendation to the doctor.
Rx Live’s pharmacists also work directly with patients to reconcile and streamline their day-to-day experience, said Engelen, who started Rx Live with his wife, Kristen Engelen, who is a clinical pharmacist.
“We also focus on medication safety,” ensuring there are no drug interactions.
