Telepharmacy & COVID-19: an Interview with Tim Youkhana

Darshan: Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Darshan Talks. We have a frequent guest of ours. We have Tim Youkhana. Tim, do I say your last name correctly? Tim: You got it. You got it, Darshan. There's multiple ... It's like tomato, tomato. Youkhana, Youkhana, it doesn't matter. Darshan: Youkhana, okay. Tim: I'll still answer. Darshan: Fair enough. Tim is a frequent guest. I've known him for a while. He is the person to talk to when it comes to telepharmacy. Darshan: As some of you may know, depending on when you're listening to this, we're in the middle of the COVID-19 outbreak. Everyone's working from home as much as they can to avoid spreading, and as they say, to avoid flattening the curve. Darshan: The perfect person to talk to right now is someone who actually has helped flatten the curve before there was a curve. In many ways, Tim is the telepharmacy hipster. He was cool before it was cool to be cool. Tim: Yeah. Darshan: Tim, let's ask a really basic question, which is, we've spoken about this before, but what is telepharmacy, and how is that different from telehealth or telemedicine? Tim: I appreciate all the accolades that you gave me, Darshan. I'm blushing right now, if you can't see it. Tim: What telepharmacy is, it's similar, in regards to the pharmacy aspect, of how telemedicine works for physicians; outpatient, inpatient treatment; psychiatric care. It's just taking that model from the telemedicine side, and integrating it into a dispensing role from a pharmacy perspective. What it allows community retail pharmacies to accomplish is essentially being able to serve a larger amount of the population in areas that might not be conducive if they were operating in a traditional setting. Tim: Right now, as you had mentioned, depending on when anybody's listening to this, we're in the middle of a COVID-19 crisis, the pandemic that's going on all over the world really. Businesses have been scrambling, because they've been shutting down all over the place, to find ways to still not only remain important in front of their clients' perspectives, but if they're an essential business, still be able to deliver the products and services that their clients need on a day to day basis. Tim: That's one area that telepharmacy, if you hadn't adopted it before this whole thing came up, and you're trying to find a way to be able to still stay relevant, if you're not looking into it right now, I really don't know what else would bring you to the table to start thinking, "Oh man, maybe I need to start looking into doing something like this." Tim: God forbid something happens like this again in the future, at least you can be prepared, and your clients will be reassured that you're still going to be able to deliver them the same amount of care, if not better, because you've already been adjusted, and there's not those growing pain that kick in any time that you adopt a new process or system into your workplace. Tim: I hope that answers, in the grand scheme, what you had asked, Darshan. Darshan: Well, I think you're answering at a grand scheme, but one of the questions I get is that just sounds like mail order. How is this different from mail order? Tim: You've got the brick and mortar aspect still. Telepharmacies still operate out of a physical location. It's considered an outpatient pharmacy. It's a community based pharmacy where patients can come in and out. You can have a storefront. You can do all those same things that you do in a traditional pharmacy setting. You just don't need to have a pharmacist on site. Tim: By being able to remove that, the largest part of your payroll, you're enabled to have a couple different pharmacies in different geograp...