Large Washington Health System Achieves 15x ROI on QuicksortRx 

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, a 12-hospital, not-for-profit health system based in Tacoma, Wash., faced financial challenges. With pharmacy as one of its biggest spenders, there was considerable pressure for pharmacy department leadership to decrease costs.  

The health system hoped to strengthen its pharmacy supply chain management by creating a centralized coordinated purchasing service supported by centralized purchasers. But that alone was not enough to achieve savings goals as significant time was still allocated to reviewing spreadsheets, pivot tables, wholesaler data, and information from different distribution centers.  

“We were spending multiple hours a day reviewing spreadsheets, pivot tables, wholesaler data, and information from our different distribution centers,” says the health system’s assistant vice president (VP) of pharmacy supply chain, revenue cycle, and technology. “It got to a point where we needed a data analytics tool to help us better manage and coordinate our pharmacy supply chain.” 

The health system did its due diligence, researching several pharmacy data analytics solutions. When it came time to decide, there was no debate. “QuicksortRx was the easy choice,” says the assistant VP.

QuicksortRx distinguished itself from competitors in many ways. The platform provides users with real-time medication prices, availability, and purchasing trends across the system’s facilities, broken down by cost center. QuicksortRx enables each of the health system’s facilities to determine the savings they achieved whereas other platforms only provide an aggregate sum. 

Pharmacy leadership appreciated that the savings tracked within QuicksortRx were true, realized savings reflected in the health system’s data. Other companies wanted to measure this by multiplying the savings achieved through a change in utilization by 12 months, but that approach will not necessarily reflect the actual savings. With QuicksortRx, nothing is calculated based off projections. 

This was also an important factor when it came to QuicksortRx’s guaranteed savings. “They promised a strong return on investment (ROI),” says the assistant VP. That guaranteed ROI was 5x the system’s investment in QuicksortRx. “They were willing to step up and say they would pay us back if we didn’t at least achieve that ROI.” As the health system would discover, QuicksortRx would far surpass that ROI.

While the QuicksortRx platform impressed pharmacy leadership, they were equally impressed with the company’s team. “It was clear that their customer service was far above everyone else’s,” says the assistant VP. “When it came to talking about what I was envisioning and hoping for, they said they could make that happen.”

The QuicksortRx pharmacist experts took the time to learn the health system’s goals and committed to helping the organization achieve them. The QuicksortRx team engages in ongoing meetings with clients to discuss goals and identify emerging savings opportunities. “They weren’t going to just train us on how to use their platform and send us off to figure the rest out,” says the assistant VP. “They were going to help us identify and correct issues.”

The health system went live with QuicksortRx in the summer of 2022.

After one year, QuicksortRx yielded an ROI of 15x — triple the 5x minimum the company promised to the health system. “They crushed the guarantee,” says the assistant VP.

The organization’s centralized pharmacy procurement team uses the platform daily looking for savings opportunities. QuicksortRx provides the health system with its blended price based off utilization. The organization is a mixed-use site across its hospitals, so pharmacy leadership looks at their Group Purchasing Organization (GPO), 340B, and Wholesale Acquisition Cost (WAC) spend. “Based off our utilization, the platform can tell us what we are currently purchasing and what is the best product for our outpatient, inpatient, GPO, 340B, and WAC needs,” says the assistant VP.  This insight allows the health system’s pharmacy leadership to make timely, intelligent purchasing decisions that deliver substantial savings.

QuicksortRx has enabled the health system to achieve many other improvements. These include —

• improved tracking of WAC spend,
• identifying repackaging savings, and
• addressing contracting issues

— helping the pharmacy department drive savings during a period when the organization needed to reign in its costs to remain viable.