UC Davis Health

Before implementing QuicksortRx, UC Davis Health was relying exclusively on spreadsheets to manage and track its drug purchasing, resulting in a lot of repetitive manual work. "To look at, manipulate, and analyze all that data is a heavy lift, to say the least," says Nishon Jones, the health system's Strategic Sourcing Analyst for Pharmacy Supply Chain Services. 

The health system's pharmacy analysts were spending substantial time on every medication analysis conducted, manually accessing and reviewing historic purchasing and pricing data across its Group Purchasing Organization (GPO), 340B program, and Wholesale Acquisition Cost (WAC) accounts. "It starts to feel redundant because you think you just completed the analysis you are being asked to perform, but that was an analysis for a different drug," Jones says. "When you use spreadsheets, you need to start your analysis from scratch every time." 

In 2020, UC Davis Health had the opportunity to demo and then trial a pharmacy management platform. That platform — QuicksortRx — would transform the health system's drug procurement process.   

The value of QuicksortRx was immediately apparent.

QuicksortRx enables health systems like UC Davis Health to achieve efficiencies by introducing automation into their pharmacy purchasing. "QuicksortRx helps me to analyze our data without ever needing to look at a spreadsheet," Jones says. "Everything is automated in such a way that I can click a few buttons and compare NDC to NDC or brand to generic. I can pull any data I need from the platform. There's no need for downloading and running and rerunning data, loading new NDCs, or manually looking up prices." 

The team behind QuicksortRx provides support to UC Davis Health and all its clients in the form of weekly meetings that include industry developments and opportunities outside of the regular course of business. "If we have questions or need help with anything at all, they are always responsive," Jones says. "If we have a request, they will make it happen. They have hosted calls and collaborated with us on many issues that fall outside of our normal work." 

Jones says that one of the most impactful ways she uses QuicksortRx is for identification and resolution of contract issues. "When you work with any wholesaler, contracts seemingly fall off every day, and then we need to go and fix them. With QuicksortRx, I don't need to dig into each contract when it falls off. I can see it on the platform and then resolve it. If I didn't have QuicksortRx, discovering and fixing contracts falling off would be a slower, more challenging process."  

One noteworthy pharmacy cost savings for UC Davis Health was realized when the health system changed how it was purchasing Botox. This opportunity was presented to Jones by a member of the QuicksortRx team, Pharmacy Account Specialist Kyle Lenio, PharmD. The Botox conversion led to hundreds of thousands of dollars in reduced expenses. "This project crossed so many different service lines and required collaboration throughout the system," Jones says.  

Jones says she knows that the QuicksortRx platform and team will continue to help UC Davis Health ensure it is optimizing its pharmacy purchasing.