Q&A: Strategic Vaccine Management Can Drive Pharmacy Success | AAP 2025
A conversation with Greg Mitchell, owner of United Drug Superstore in Hatch, New Mexico, at AAP 2025.
Pharmacists played a critical role during the COVID-19 pandemic, administering vaccines at a higher rate than other health care professionals.1 Through the Federal Retail Pharmacy Program, they delivered over 300 million COVID-19 vaccine doses nationwide. This high level of engagement not only improved vaccination rates and patient satisfaction but also reshaped the role of community pharmacies.2
Q&A: Strategic Vaccine Management Can Drive Pharmacy Success | AAP 2025 / RFBSIP - stock.adobe.com
At the American Associated Pharmacies (AAP) Annual Conference, held April 10 to 12 in Austin, Texas, Drug Topics® sat down with Greg Mitchell, owner of United Drug Superstore in Hatch, New Mexico, to discuss how important vaccine administration is to a pharmacy’s overall profitability, what strategies pharmacists can use to maximize vaccine uptake and patient engagement, and how retail pharmacies can leverage vaccine services to build long-term patient relationships.
READ MORE: Importance of Vaccination to Independent Pharmacy Profitability | AAP 2025
Drug Topics: How significant is vaccine administration to a pharmacy’s overall profitability?
Greg Mitchell: It's just been huge for us. It's been amazing. We jumped into the vaccination business in 2020, before the COVID-19 vaccines came out. We were very fortunate to have been one of the states where our wholesalers supplied the federal supply of vaccines. We jumped right in with both barrels and finished that year with about 5800 vaccines. The profitability that year was well above anything we'd seen in previous years. What we look at now is that typically, if vaccines are 5% of our business, they're 10% of our gross margin. That tells you that it's very significant.
Drug Topics: What strategies can pharmacists use to maximize vaccine uptake and patient engagement?
Mitchell: That was a question that I had after looking at the deck that Scott shared with us today when I saw that another classic chain was actually up in vaccine administration, whereas our stores, independent stores, all seem to be down. My store was down 30% this last year. We went into some of the grocery stores to see what was going on, and they did a fantastic job of point of purchase advertising. They had advertising when you walked in the door, advertising when you picked up your cart, advertising on the end caps, advertising at the checkouts, to try and get the patients over to the pharmacy. For us, we've got to really concentrate on doing that this next year.
The other thing is, you can mine your state immunization information system database. We've started doing that in the last 3 months and we've had a huge uptake. We're actually calling the patients and saying, “Hey, we see where you got your first shingles vaccine. You didn't get your second one. We need to get you in here.” That's really bringing people in. We are concentrating on having our staff mining that immunization information system every time we fill a prescription for somebody. On the state site it shows exactly what they're due for. Then we're going to call them and say, “Hey, when you come in, you might want to get your COVID-19 shot, or your second Shingrix, or whatever it is. That's been tremendous for us.
Drug Topics: How can retail pharmacies leverage vaccine services to build long-term patient relationships?
Mitchell: it's interesting that you asked that. We're in a rural area, and when we started off doing the COVID-19 vaccines, we actually did more vaccines in our small, rural pharmacy in Hatch, New Mexico, than any other pharmacy in our county. Our county includes the second most populous city in the state, with multiple Walgreens, multiple CVS, multiple Walmarts, every chain pharmacy you could think of. We did a great job on it, and a lot of the patients were so happy that we've made patients out of them and they've come 40 miles to our pharmacy from the city where there's plenty of pharmacies to choose from. They've decided to come back and do business with us. Just do a good job and people will stay with you.
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