Lino’s Pharmacy is a dual-location pharmacy that has served the towns of Roma and Rio Grande City, TX for over 40 years. The independent drug stores are owned by Jesus Rios Jr. RPh, who takes pride in improving his communities’ healthcare through fast and personalized service.
Lino’s offerings include prescription and OTC services, health and office supplies, cards and gifts, immunizations, med sync, MTM, and durable medical equipment, and free local delivery.
Rios first became a Digital Pharmacist client in August 2019, when he decided to upgrade to an IVR system. Since then, they’ve also enrolled in Digital Pharmacist’s healthsite and mobile app, and digital marketing services. Last month, they also began using the Patient Engagement Platform (PEP) and its newest feature, the Vaccination Scheduler.
On April 1st, Digital Pharmacist launched a free trial of the COVID-19 vaccination management tool as part of our Patient Engagement Platform expansion. Vaccination Scheduler supports our recently-added Vaccination Waitlist, which helps pharmacies collect and organize patient information for vaccination appointment scheduling.
In just 3 weeks, more than 190 pharmacies have signed up for our free Vaccination Scheduler trial and over 18,000 total vaccination appointments have been scheduled on the PEP. As an early adopter, Lino’s Pharmacy has been able to switch from a manual scheduling process and reach their Spanish-speaking community to schedule vaccine appointments.
Since launching the Vaccination Scheduler, Digital Pharmacist has seen:
190+
pharmacy locations adopt the scheduler
7,000+
appointments booked by patients
11,000+
appointments created by pharmacists
Rios and the Lino’s team started prepping to offer COVID-19 vaccinations in February and began administering shots in March. But they had trouble finding a good solution for appointment scheduling.
“We tried using a Jotform for one of our locations and it kind of crashed, so we stopped,” Rios said. Next, they tried advertising vaccinations on their Facebook page and signing people up that way. They thought about adding a scheduler tool like Acuity, but that it just seemed like extra work. “Then I heard about Digital Pharmacist’s solution and I liked the idea behind it.”
According to Rios, Digital Pharmacist’s PEP and Vaccination Scheduler have helped streamline the appointment-making process. “It makes it easier to just go to one place and get access to your patients, program workflows, and track the data and how many appointments you’re getting.”
Effective communication for the pharmacy is a must since Lino’s county heads the list of Texas’ social vulnerability index which is used to allocate vaccines across the state. Additionally, the pharmacy sits in the middle of a large rural county of around 50,000 people, most of whom speak English as their second language. The PEP solution’s ability to create custom templated messages allows them to send multilingual vaccination updates and notifications to their Spanish-speaking communities, ultimately helping them engage and communicate with their patients efficiently. “I’m bilingual and most of my patients, at least the ones that have been here for a long time, are 65 and over and Spanish-speaking only,” Rios said.
Digital Pharmacist is committed to helping pharmacies safely manage COVID-19 vaccination administration. Our Patient Engagement Platform offers secure bulk and targeted messaging and vaccination waitlist and scheduling tools.
Learn more about how you can take advantage of our free trial offer today.
