Davis Pharmacy has been on the same corner in Vermillion, South Dakota for 146 years. Last November, it became the first independent in America to take care of patient's request 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Here's how.
On a Thursday night last November, Matt Lavin locked the door of Davis Pharmacy and heard the phone ringing inside.
Matt has been a pharmacist for thirty years. Seven years ago, he became the fourth-generation owner of Davis. The pharmacy has stood on the same corner in Vermillion, South Dakota since 1880. Through two world wars. Through the Spanish flu. Through every chain pharmacy that ever opened nearby. Five thousand prescriptions a month. One phone line.
He has a rule he's kept for thirty years: a phone in a pharmacy should never ring more than three times.
When the doors close, that rule becomes impossible to keep. What every independent pharmacist in America knows: when the pharmacy is closed, the patients don't stop calling. They just stop reaching anyone.
Matt had accepted this. The way his father had. The way his grandfather had.
That night, he didn't.
What he did next made Davis Pharmacy the first independent in America to take care of patient requests 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. He didn't hire anyone for the night shift.
Here's how he did it. ↓
Two hundred calls a day. One pharmacy. Five staff.
Patients at the counter. Cars in the drive-thru. Voicemails piling up. Thirty over a weekend on a landline with no way to skip, no way to rewind. Miss the Rx number? Start the message over. From the top.
Staff burned out. Patients hung up. Refills went to Walgreens. Every night at close, Matt locked the door knowing someone would need him at 9 p.m. and he wouldn't be there.
A pharmacy this size can't hire ten more people. We can't stay open 24 hours. But our patients deserve care whenever they need it.
It refills prescriptions, answers questions, and routes clinical calls to the pharmacist. Always in two rings. Any hour. Live at Davis Pharmacy since November.
Mrs. Halverson, 73, called for her blood pressure refill. The pharmacy had been closed for five hours. The phone picked up on the second ring. Her refill was confirmed in under two minutes.
This is the first time in thirty years of being a pharmacist that I feel comfortable having a system help with our phones. I truly believe Elevaze has created a tool that will touch and benefit many industries over time.
Move the sliders. See what Davis's results would look like at your pharmacy.
Chains eat their margins. Staff shortages hollow them out. Medicare pricing cuts their legs. And the phone, the first tool they ever had, runs their lives.
Davis found a way through. If the 19,000 other independents in America did the same, patients would get this instead:
Davis showed them the way. Here's the playbook.
What Davis proved works. A playbook the 19,000 other independents in America can run.
Davis was the first. Yours could be the next. We are documenting how independents in America are fighting back, one phone line at a time.
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