Advisory Meeting #2

What is the best way to run a profitable retail pharmacy?

The best way to run a profitable retail pharmacy is to make sure that all prescriptions bring in profit.

-Patients prescriptions always come with co-pay which amounts to how much will be paid per prescription.

-Insurance companies post how much each prescription will be compensated for on their co-pays site

-Some prescriptions will actually cost the business profit if sold to certian patients with different insurance companies. 

Source: Book "The pharmaceutical Industry" by Roman Espejo.

Espejo, Roman. The Pharmaceutical Industry. New Haven: Gale CENGAGE Learning, 2011. Print. Opposing Viewpoints Ser.

Independent Component 2 Approval

1.  Describe in detail what you plan to do for your 30 hours.
     I am going to do 30 extra hours of mentor ship. 
2.  Discuss how or what you will do to meet the expectation of showing 30 hours of evidence.
    I'm going to keep a journal of every single hour of extra mentor ship I do. Then have a written statement from my mentor confirming everything I have in that digital journal.
3.  And explain how what you will be doing will help you explore your topic in more depth.
    I hope through experiencing these extra hours to get better answers to my essential question. They will be pivotal in making sure that I have answers and foundation to talk about during my senior presentation. 
4.  Post a log on the right hand side of your blog near your other logs and call it the independent component 2 log.
    Fo sho! 

Independent Component 1

LITERAL
(a) Statement saying: “I, Ralph Hernandez, affirm that I completed my independent component which represents 30 hours of work.”
(b) My source who helped me complete my Independent Component, was Timothy Wong, a pharmacist from the Del Amo pharmacy in Torrance, CA. He's been a retail pharmacist for 12 years. 
(c) Digital Spreadsheet on my blog. 
(d) I completed 30 extra hours of mentor ship with my mentor. In those hours, I was able to get a better definition of what it was to run a retail pharmacy. Through it, I obtained an essential question and many possible answers to it. 
INTERPRETIVE 
Defend your work and explain how the significant parts of your component and how it demonstrates 30 hours of work.   Provide evidence (photos, transcript, art work, videos, etc) of the 30 hours of work. 
I did a online Journal with reflections of each day of mentorship I had and its signifigance. Also with a letter from my mentor confirming what I put.   

Letter confirming hours. Click Here
APPLIED
How did the component help you understand the foundation of your topic better?  Please include specific examples to illustrate how it helped. 
Through the extra 30 hours of mentor ship, I got a very defined idea of what being a pharmacist means. At my mentorship, I was able to see clearly what it was to maintain patient care. I saw my mentor make sure that patients understood their prescriptions, which ended up becoming my first answer to my essential question. I also was able to see the financial aspect of being a pharmacist by seeing the insurance companies co-pay sit, which shows how much profit is made. Which I plan to make a second answer out of. 

Lesson 2 Reflection

1. Positive Statement

What are you most proud of in your Lesson 2 Presentation and why?
    -I'm most proud of how I was able to make sure everyone understood the information I presented.during the activity, I was able to see that they had comprehended what I said and could justify their answers based on what I said during the presentation. 

2. Questions to Consider
       a.     What assessment would you give yourself on your Lesson 2 Presentation (self-assessment)?
               P
  b.     Explain why you deserve that grade using evidence from the Lesson 2 component contract.
               - I feel I deserve a P on the presentation because I hit the talking time and met all the " For P consideration" Requirements. My activity engaged the entire audience. I referenced my mentor ship. Lesson props were present( Prescription bottle). I asked some people in the back if they could hear me and they confirmed I was loud enough to hear in the back. 

3. What worked for you in your Lesson 2?
        - I feel I had an easy time hitting the required 10 minutes because I had so much information to talk about and didn't ever feel like I was running out of things to talk about. Probably all the research. 

4.  (What didn't work) If you had a time machine, what would you have done differently to improve your Lesson 2?
     -I would have created a PowerPoint which would have all my content in bullet points so that people have a better visual of what I'm trying to talk about. I felt that others with powerpoints did really well with not reading off them and just using them as a reference. I would have liked to have that. Mabe for senior project. 

5. Finding Value
What do you think your answer #2 is going to be?  
   - Probably " Pharmacists should maintain profit with prescriptions" 

Third Interview Questions

1. What is the best way to run a profitable retail pharmacy?
2. How do you make sure patients are handled efficiently?
3. How do you ensure that customers continue to come in? 
4. What is the best way to sell prescriptions and maintain profit?
5. What is the best way to fit prescriptions to their patients? 
6. What are the best technologies to use to satisfy your patients the most?
7. How would you help patients learn the effectiveness of completing prescriptions? 
8. What is the best way to handle a patient who is clearly an abuser of prescription drugs?
9. What is the best way to organize patient’s files so it can easily be found?

10. What is the best way to ensure patients they are receiving the best care possible? 

Blog 11: Mentorship 10 Hours

1.   Where are you doing your mentorship?
      I'm doing my mentorship at the Del Amo pharmacy in Torrence. 
2.   Who is your contact?
      My mentor is Timothy Wong, a retail pharmacist. 
3.   How many total hours have you done?
      In total, I have 50 hours including my summer mentorship. 30 of which I am using for my Independant Component 1. So I need 40 more to hit my mentorship hours goal. 
4.   Summarize the 10 hours of service you did.
       When I was doing my mentorship, I was really trying to get a good Idea of what a profitable retail pharmacist does. Since my mentor qualifies, I figured i'd ask him questions about what a good pharmacist does and how best to do it. I ran the register while he would talk to patients and show me what he needed to do to make sure this patient was handled properly so that they would keep bringing him business. 
5.   Email your house teacher the name of your contact and their phone number confirming who they should call to verify it.  
     SENT. 

Blog 10: The Holidays

1. What did you do over the break with your senior project?

    I made a few stops to my mentors pharmacy to ask him about things he thought would be helpful in answering my essential question. I also stayed at the pharmacy to observe my mentor at work and see if I couldn't find out an answer myself. 

2. What was the most important thing you learned from what you did and why?  What was the 
source of what you learned?

      The most important thing I learned from mentoring over the break was the importance of making sure that patient records are efficiently managed so that refills and prescriptions are handled more efficiently. The source of this would be my mentor actually dealing with this inefficiency when I stopped by. 

3.   If you were going to do a 10 question interview on questions related to answers of your EQ, who would you talk to and why?

      I would want to interview Kenny Quach. He was my interviewee for interview 2 and he knows the pharmaceudical business pretty well.