Medications remain an important part of a clinical weight loss solution. Northwind Pharmaceuticals works with many medically supervised weight loss clinics that offer medications as part of their solution. Physician dispensing in a bariatric practice is a great fit for several reasons:
- Many patients are not good candidates for gastric bypass surgery and must therefore look for other alternatives to help them manage the disease called obesity.
- Physicians typically prescribe a narrow range of medications for weight-loss management. A smaller, targeted formulary is easier to manage from a clinic perspective.
- Because weight management is an ongoing battle, physician-directed weight management often requires that patients be on medications for extended periods. This increases the practice’s opportunity to dispense medications and provide convenient service to patients.
- The nature of obesity is complex from a psychological as well as a physiological perspective. Allowing the patient to receive treatment and products in the safe environment of the clinic avoids extra trips to the pharmacy and long waits for medications.
Depending on the number of patients, medication dispensing in a bariatric clinic can be overwhelming. Clinics sometimes purchase bulk bottles and count out pills for patient prescriptions. This is incredibly time consuming and completely unnecessary. Northwind Pharmaceuticals offers prepackaged medications; this means that we package the bulk medications into smaller, unit-of-use bottles. For example, some of our clinics will dispense Phentermine 37.5mg in 30 count, 45 count and 60 count bottles. Prepackaged bottles are labeled according to FDA and state pharmacy board guidelines; the clinic will need to place a label with the patient’s name, instructions and clinic name on the bottle to make it a legal prescription.
To help manage the dispensing process, Northwind offers dispensing systems that comprise a manual labeling approach as well as software (RxTracker) to print labels and track inventory. Our goal is to make it quick and easy to provide the medications to your patients.
There are no easy solutions. Clinics offering weight management services must utilize every available option to help fight obesity and improve the quality of life for patients.
