Q&A: The Diagnostic Test Opening the Door for New Community Pharmacy Revenue Streams

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, experts have observed unprecedented trends among patients and consumers surrounding visits to health care destinations and their willingness to care for themselves. With a new landscape for at-home testing introduced since, the convenience of community pharmacy creates an opportunity for advancing pharmacists’ place in the health care community faster than ever before.

“Consumer behavior really has shifted towards self-directed monitoring, but the need for human clinical interaction [and] interpretation hasn't disappeared; it's become more important,” Tim Drapeau, CEO of CLIAwaived Inc, told Drug Topics. “Pharmacies now are the only setting that really bridges the gap at scale. It's where convenience meets competence.”

In a fast-paced, digital world where convenience seems to be crucial for patients and businesses alike, organizations like CLIAwaived are looking to meet patients right where they are while simultaneously bolstering the role of clinical touchpoints in the community.

Drapeau joined us in part 1 of our interview to discuss the brand-new Test Yourself @ Home kit sponsored by CLIAwaived and just how it is helping patients and pharmacists in a post-COVID-19-pandemic world.

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Drug Topics: TY@H is being positioned as a tool to help pharmacies evolve into frontline health monitoring destinations. Beyond just adding a new product to the shelves, how does TY@H shift the fundamental business model and clinical identity of independent pharmacies?

Tim Drapeau: TY@H really represents a fundamental shift from a transaction-based to a relationship-based model for independent pharmacies. Traditionally, pharmacies operate reactively. They're waiting for prescriptions, they're filling them, sending patients on their way, while reimbursements keep getting squeezed. With TY@H, it really flips it in a couple of different ways. First, it transforms pharmacies into a proactive health hub. When someone comes in for a vitamin E test or a lipid panel, the pharmacy becomes the first touch point in their health journey.

Second, it creates a consultation revenue stream independent of their prescription volume. For example, for a patient with a B12 deficiency, it opens the door to evidence-based recommendations. Your pharmacist can recommend supplements, lifestyle changes, even make a physician referral. It provides cash pay consultation fees that the pharmacy actually controls.

Finally, it changes pharmacy's identity from medication dispenser to a health advisor. It fundamentally changes how patients really value their pharmacy and the pharmacist. Test Yourself really isn't just another skewed catalog number, it's a new business model that we hope leverages clinical expertise, deepens patient relationships, and opens a new revenue channel outside of third-party reimbursement.

Drug Topics: We saw a massive surge in at-home testing during the COVID-19 pandemic, but TY@H targets chronic conditions, men’s and women’s health, and even early colorectal cancer screening. How has consumer behavior permanently changed regarding self-directed diagnostics, and why is the pharmacy the proper middle ground for these deeper health insights?

Tim Drapeau: COVID rewired consumer expectations around health care access. Before the pandemic, at-home testing felt like a compromise. COVID normalized self-collection overnight. You had 150 million Americans interpreting test results in their kitchens. The comfort with testing didn't really go away when the pandemic ended. When the pandemic ended, the convenience stuck of self-testing, but the confidence gap really remained.

I think consumers now are actively seeking at-home options for hormone panels, metabolic testing, sexually transmitted infections. They prefer not to take time off from work and pay these $50-$150 copays for routine blood work. They also don't want to be alone when the results come back abnormal. Getting a PDF by email really isn't enough when your prostate-specific antigen’s (PSA’s) abnormal or your thyroid markers are out of range. This is where I think pharmacy’s become essential, really. Direct-to-consumer companies can ship a test kit, but they can't really provide trusted local clinical guidance. Pharmacies kind of sit in a perfect spot between the do-it-yourself health care and a traditional clinical system.

With a pharmacy, you don't always need an appointment, they have extended hours, they're located everywhere in the community, and pharmacists can help interpret those lab values in plain language. They recommend next steps, and they can even facilitate a physician referral when needed. When someone gets a TY@H kit, and the results show, for example, low vitamin D, the pharmacists can have that conversation immediately. Consumer behavior really has shifted towards self-directed monitoring, but the need for human clinical interaction [and] interpretation hasn't disappeared; it's become more important. Pharmacies now are the only setting that really bridges the gap at scale. It's where convenience meets competence.

Drug Topics: The TY@H packaging and in-store tools are specifically designed to prompt pharmacist-patient conversations. Can you walk us through a specific scenario where the product acts as a bridge to a deeper clinical consultation that might not have happened otherwise?

Tim Drapeau: I'll give you a real-world example. It's more common than people think. Studies show that 1 in 4 Americans skip routine check-ups and up to 30% of patients now miss scheduled visits entirely. For patients on GLP-1 medications like semaglutide, that monitoring gap can be dangerous. Take, for example, a 52-year-old man picks up his third month of semaglutide at the pharmacy. He's losing weight, down 18 pounds, feeling great. The pharmacy tech mentions the availability of a new TY@H weight-loss panel that we developed. It's designed for patients on GLP-1s to monitor how the medication is affecting your metabolism and your liver function.

At first, customers will be hesitant. His doctors said come back in a year, unless there's a problem. But our packaging says, ‘Hey, this monitors your cholesterol, your liver enzymes, your blood sugar, your thyroid, all in one kit. Know what's happening now, and that little interaction there prompts them to buy a kit. Two weeks later, the pharmacist can review those results with the customer. The good news: HbA_1c is dropping, triglycerides are down, HDL is improving, medication appears to be working beautifully, but his ALT and his AST liver enzymes are elevated. At that point, the pharmacist has an encounter and says, ‘Hey, your metabolic markers look great, but I'm seeing elevated liver enzymes.’

The pharmacist can then ask some basic questions and find out what's going on. It turns out, the patient cut calories so aggressively, he wasn't getting enough protein. He started on a multi-vitamin with high-dose vitamin A, and both these things could be stressing the liver. The pharmacist might suggest there, let's increase your protein, let's stop the high-dose vitamin A, and let's do a retest in 6 weeks. At that point, the pharmacist can also loop in the physician, if those enzymes are continuing to go up. Without that TY@H kit, the patient is 1 in a million consumers out there waiting a full year for follow-up without anything happening. If the liver enzymes keep climbing, it could force someone off medication that's actually working. Instead, in this situation, TY@H really creates a clinical surveyance point that simply doesn't exist in traditional GLP-1 care. So, a routine refill becomes really a critical monitoring event with objective data.

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