Retail Pharmacy Search Portal zipcodemeds. com Launches; Customers Will Have Free Instant Connection to Local Pharmacies For Enhanced Service and Pricing Options
Zipcodemeds™ is designed for pharmacy customers frustrated with the inefficiencies of retail pharmacies, concerned about the safety risk of unregulated Internet drugstores and dissatisfied with the slower turnaround time of mail-order. Advanced but user-friendly technology enables the most prevalent pharmacy service and pricing problems to be bypassed online but maintains the professional oversight of a licensed pharmacist by requiring that the final step of all transactions be completed inside an actual pharmacy.
Wilmington, DE (PRWEB) September 29, 2010
BinghamShore Corp. a healthcare services company and owner of the zipcodemeds™ trademark is pleased to announce the launch of www. zipcodemeds. com. This website provides millions of pharmacy customers with one point from where they can instantly reserve and guarantee availability of their medications or lock in a discount price on potentially any medication at a neighborhood pharmacy. Customers will also be able to submit instant requests to pharmacies and initiate a competitive bid situation where the pharmacies send fast electronic responses from which the customer makes an informed decision. All orders are initiated on the Internet but delivered at an actual pharmacy and a legal prescription or refill order is required. The proprietary technology behind zipcodemedsTM enables the most positive elements of the major pharmacy delivery channels---retail, Internet and mail-order---to be combined while at the same time discarding the elements that most customers find undesirable. The safety and real-time benefits of retail pharmacies, the broad inventory availability of internet pharmacies and the lower prices of mail-order pharmacies are maintained while the frustrations and chaos, the risk of foreign pharmacies and the slow turnaround of each of the respective channels are discarded. The result is a pharmacy experience that could well become as efficient and predictable as reserving, pricing and picking up a car rental. Initial launch is in five cities: Dallas, Houston, New York, Jersey City, and Los Angeles with additional cities expected to be added rapidly.
Retail pharmacies fill billions of prescriptions each year and service often suffers. A common problem is pharmacies not having sufficient medication on hand to meet demand. Customers are forced to receive a three-day supply or sometimes nothing at all on their initial visit then need to make a second or even a third trip to the pharmacy to completely fill their prescription. BinghamShore’s Senior Vice President of Product Development noted “our zip-Find connected system that provides the customer with not just the ability to quickly see which local pharmacies have the medication in stock, but that also provides the capability to reserve the medication and guarantee availability is extremely valuable. In serious conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure, it could even be lifesaving by ensuring that treatment is not delayed.” In addition, customers can take advantage of an innovative pricing system that allows pharmacies to offer special deals on any drug at any time. “Some big pharmacies currently offer $4 generics but there are a lot of other medications that millions of cash-strapped Americans use that are not on this or any other discount list” said BinghamShore’s CEO. “Our zip-Price system allows any pharmacy to offer deep discounts on any medication that’s legal in the United States, guarantee the pricing to the penny and even allow payment online for in-store pick up. This is unlike the numerous drug discount cards out there that are only really useful for specific drugs and even then will only give the customer a pricing estimate not a guaranteed final price. zip-Price greatly expands the potential that customers who are self-paying, have a high deductible insurance or are using a health savings account will find a great discount on practically any drug they may be taking. It is important to note that zip-Price is not a drug discount card program but rather an electronic and more efficient version of what a self-pay customer might achieve if she tried to negotiate directly with a pharmacy. A pharmacy might decide for example to sell insulin vials at a discount during their slowest periods of the day in order to drive business. Everyone wins. Small pharmacies are small businesses and the pharmacist could well be hurting from the weak economic climate just like everyone else. We make it possible for customers looking for deals to connect with pharmacies offering them.”
Customers looking to purchase prescription drugs should ensure that they have a prescription before heading to the pharmacy. A refill order at any pharmacy in the United States is also valid as zipcodemeds™ provider pharmacies will transfer the order to be filled. Customer searches on the portal are initiated by clicking either the zip-Find (availability guarantee) or zip-Price (real-time discounts) tabs. It is free to open an account and the system will even maintain secure transaction records for customers who might need to pull a medication history report. If a transaction cannot be instantly completed in the customer’s ZIP code search area the system will default to the zip-Bid pathway. The customer can quickly send in a request that pharmacies will competitively respond to. Customers pick their choice of the responses right within the system and complete the zip-Find or zip-Price transaction as normal. “During the introductory phase of the service we expect that zip-Bid transactions will be an important way for customers to get great service on zip-Price and zip-Find transactions” says BinghamShore’s Senior VP of Product development. “As pharmacies gain traction in preloading offers, customers will be able to choose from pre-listed choices directly while still having the option to use zip-Bid for uncommon medications or unusual quantities of common medications.”
About BinghamShore Corporation
BinghamShore Corporation, a Delaware company incorporated in 2008 creates solutions for the US healthcare market. The company is particularly interested in large scale grassroots retail healthcare concepts where its ideas have significant potential to positively impact both the end user and small to medium sized businesses. BinghamShore is structured across three business divisions - grassroots retail solutions, healthcare information and healthcare concierge services - designed to create an integrated suite of businesses to serve hundreds of millions of US healthcare consumers. Its senior management team has decades of combined professional experience in the healthcare, management consulting, and investment banking professions as well as management degrees from some of the most prestigious business schools in the United States. The company maintains staff in multiple US cities
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