When I first started in practice, the clinical use of dietary supplements was a large part of what I offered. This meant choosing between investing a large amount of capital and stocking my shelves with all the supplements I would routinely recommend; or sending patients to the local health food store with detailed instructions.
I choose the former, as it was important to me to provide the highest quality products and ensure the proper options were being utilized.
Why In-House Can Be Problematic
The challenge I quickly ran into was the financial weight of managing and maintaining an in-house dispensary. It consumed a great deal of time and if I wasn't careful, I would end up throwing supplements away as they expired or selling them at step discount as the expiration date drew near. As this portion of the business took up more and more of my time, I decided there must be a better way.
Other dispensary management options do exist, but the one I found that fits best for me is an online dispensary. When I first made the leap, the technology was a bit clunky and not all that user friendly, but the progression to current day has resulted in a very smooth and user-friendly platform.
With an online dispensary, you have the ability to access thousands of products and determine the specific options that fit the needs of your patients and practice best. When patients purchase products online, you receive a standard commission and your supplement overhead worries essentially become a thing of the past.
The Benefits
When working with the right online supplement portal, there is tremendous flexibility in terms of interaction with patients. Setting up accounts is free, with no obligation to ever sell even one product. Many other perks exist, some of which include:
Recommended product lists: You have the ability to create a list of only the products you want your patients to access through general recommendations or patient-specific lists. This allows patients to choose, at their leisure, the products recommended to them or that they desire the most. Custom comments and instructions for the products also may be included.
Document storage: Do you have documents you are always providing to patients? You can send them electronically to your patients via some online supplement portals.
Patient communication: Easy, consistent patient communication, which can be sent to some or all of your patient base, makes it easy to maintain contact with patients even when they are no longer in active care.
HIPAA-secure communication: No, your Gmail account is not OK to use with patients. Some portals provide a secure communications platform. This is the exclusive way we communicate with our patients.
Point of Sale: Online dispensaries offer fast access to your recommended products from a computer in the office, and they will show up on your patient's doorstep within a few days.
Order tracking: Know when and what your patients are ordering. This can help to increase compliance, as you know when patients should be reordering.
Long-term passive income: What happens when your patient is "better" or only sees you sporadically? Many times, patients will just go to the health food store to purchase their supplements, but with the easy access you provide, they can order what they need, and know is correct for them, from the comfort of their own home with 24/7 access.
Challenges and Solutions
One of the primary challenges with using an online supplement dispensary is that your patients have to wait before receiving their products. For some, this isn't a big problem, but at times it can be important to have products in your office for immediate access. A hybrid model can be incorporated in which you carry the most popular products in your office for immediate access, while using the online portal for additional recommendations and repeat purchases by patients.
Another common concern revolves around the perceived decreased profit margin compared to selling products within the office. Generally speaking, an in-office dispensary has a 50 percent margin before associated costs are considered, while the commission paid on online supplement sales is 30-35 percent, depending on the platform. In-office sounds better, right?
Well, there are many other costs of selling products in your office beyond the product cost itself. Expenses associated with this management include the administrative costs of paying someone for inventory management and ordering; the cost of expired supplements being discarded; and the opportunity cost of having the physical storage space for the supplements being used in some other manner. What does that add up to? Ten percent of the sale? Twenty-five percent?
Every office is different, but in my experience, it has made financial sense to have a guaranteed profit of 35 percent and not deal with the rest.
Getting Started: Key Steps
If you are ready to take the plunge it is very easy to get started. Just follow the steps below:
- Contact your current supplement source to see if it provides a patient ordering platform. If so, set up your access.
- Determine if you will be providing products exclusively online or via a hybrid approach.
- Populate your product recommendations.
- Create treatment protocol templates.
- Upload any documents you wish to electronically disseminate to patients.
- Inform your patients of the supplement policy changes and to expect a communication from your chosen platform about setting up their access.
- Upload patient information to create their access and send your patients an initial email to log in.
- Send your patients a message through the platform's compliant messaging system to further discuss the change and provide any insight you wish on how the system is to be used.
- Sit back and take a breath, as you no longer have to worry about the large amount of capital that used to be tied up in products on your shelves.
Dr. Christopher Oswald,a graduate of Northwestern Health Sciences University, is a chiropractor and certified nutrition specialist. He practices in Wisconsin, focusing on whole-body care for those suffering from head and neck pain. Dr. Oswald is an advisory board member of Nordic Naturals and the National Association of Nutrition Professionals. He can be reached at
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