California Business - Volume 3, Issue 1 - Northern California - 7

COVER

A NEW

approach
Integrated Prescription Management serves up
a healthy dose of customer service to attract
middle-market clients BY LESLIE STEVENS

magine a system in which callers are connected
to a real person instead of an interactive voice
response system, and pharmacists receive a head-ups
notification when a medication can't be refilled. This
is not a throwback to some bygone era - providing
superior customer service is a daily ritual at Integrated
Prescription Management (IPM).
"Lots of companies offer pharmacy management
services," says W. Troy Collins, IPM's president and CEO.
"It's not what we do, it's how we do it that sets us apart.
We've been focused on exceptional customer service since
day one."
"Day one" was in 2009. Collins had been working as
a senior vice president for a national pharmacy benefits
manager (PBM) when he recognized an opportunity in
the market: Large pharmaceutical management firms
were unable or unwilling to service small to mid-sized
companies. Collins' entrepreneurial drive couldn't resist
the opportunity to fill the niche, so he launched IPM to
focus on this underserved segment of the market.
A PBM is a third-party administrator of prescription
drug programs. According to a nationwide survey by
Buck Consultants, 61 percent of employers use PBMs to
manage pharmacy networks, help with benefits design
and implementation, negotiate pricing and handle rebate
management. The industry's concentration on large
employers and insurance companies, as well as recent
consolidation, has opened the door for mid-tier players
like IPM.

Collins' passion for mid-tier customers goes back to his
early days as a packing house owner. He had a number of
ups and downs.
"One of the biggest lessons I learned from my time in
the fruit industry is that building your business around
a few big accounts can be a losing strategy," Collins says.
"That's one of the reasons IPM focuses our efforts on midmarket clients. We'd rather have lots of small or mid-level
accounts and provide dynamite service."
As with any startup, there have been bumps in
the road, but IPM's rise has been nothing short of
phenomenal. The firm was recognized as one of the 5,000
fastest growing private companies in the United States
from 2009 to 2012, and it broke into the prestigious Inc.
500 list in 2012. IPM was ranked 380th overall and the
fourth-fastest-growing health care company in California.
"IPM offers the same basic blocking and tackling that
any PBM is going to offer," Collins says. "What makes
us different is how we deliver our services and how we
interact with our clients, members and pharmacies."
Creating a customer-centric model
Collins realized that he needed the right structure to
support his customer service strategy, an organizational
design that fosters employee engagement, creative
problem solving, interactive dialogues and new ways to
optimize the customer experience.
"I'm not a fan of hierarchical structures because they
inhibit creativity, so we don't have silos," he says. "We're

California Business * 7

California Business - Volume 3, Issue 1 - Northern California

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