US Faces Biggest Healthcare Challenge -- And It's Not COVID-19

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Apr 01, 2020, 08:30 ET

NEW YORK, April 1, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Globally, the world is focused on COVID-19, but the real challenge facing the healthcare industry may be something much less obvious: accessibility and affordable. Runaway prescription costs and access to quality healthcare are the predominant underlying issues of a system that likely will be severely tested by global COVID-19 pandemic.

While COVID-19 runs rampant worldwide, experts agree that science and technology will eventually find ways to deal with the ravaging disease. However, the pandemic has only exacerbated America's real healthcare challenge — affordable healthcare and prescription medicines. The only sensible solution may be to marshal the forces of innovation and technology to improve and expand healthcare services, streamline operating expenses, expedite deliveries and mitigate runaway costs. At the epicenter of a multibillion-dollar opportunity, Trxade Group Inc. (NASDAQ: MEDS) (MEDS Profile) is delivering on a unique business strategy that makes healthcare and prescriptions more accessible, affordable and convenient, delineating Trxade in a fractured, inefficient industry. In testament to market opportunity, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) has entered the space with its PillPack platform to simplify the prescription process for consumers. McKesson Corporation (NYSE: MCK), one of the largest pharmaceutical providers in the United States, serves both public and private sectors. Teladoc Health Inc. (NYSE: TDOC) provides virtual health solutions to millions of patients around the world, allowing round-the-clock access to doctors. CVS Health Corporation (NYSE: CVS) goes beyond the corner drugstore and plays a role in everything from care-management to cost-management systems, allowing quick responses to changing patient needs.

The United States spent $3.6 trillion on health in 2018 and ranks last in efficiency and patient outcomes
Affordability and access are primary drivers of dismal assessment
Technology and innovation provide sensible solutions

To view an infographic of this editorial, click here.

The Challenge

America offers some of the most advanced health services in the world, but access and affordability remain out of reach for a huge swath of the population. In fact, Gallup has identified healthcare as the number-one concern of this country for the last 18 consecutive years. Healthcare spending now accounts for about 18% of the nation's GDP, soaring to $3.6 trillion ($11,172 per person) in 2018.

Even with the most expensive healthcare system in the world, the United States still ranks last among industrialized nations in efficiency, equity and patient outcomes. High costs, difficulty accessing primary care and inefficient administration plague the U.S. healthcare system. However bleak this assessment may appear, private sector ingenuity and technological innovation can provide pathways to expand healthcare access and mitigate costs.

Technology and Transparency

Leveraging the nation's 24,000 independent pharmacies, Trxade Group Inc. (NASDAQ: MEDS) is delivering much-needed solutions to the healthcare dilemma. Trxade is rapidly building a platform of integrated drug procurement, delivery and healthcare services to facilitate price transparency and increased profit margins for both independent pharmacies and pharmaceutical product wholesalers.

Independent pharmacies make up over one-third of all pharmacies in the United States but lack buying power and technical ability to compete with the large chains. Identifying a unique opportunity, Trxade established strong business relationships with this group, delivering needed technology, consumers and cost savings. Trxade has created an ever-expanding, closed-loop system of wholesale and retail-drug purchasing, prescription delivery, telehealth and customer acquisition. Trxade attacks the inefficient value chain in the healthcare system, offering drug-price transparency, efficient purchasing and the delivery of drugs direct to independent pharmacists and consumers.

The Corner Pharmacy

Trxade's strategy starts with its web-based Trxade S2P purchasing platform, www.trxade.com. The platform facilitates transactions between independent pharmacists and drug distributors. The company's robust e-commerce technology platform delivers buyer/seller pricing algorithms, product availability and data-analytics features that reduce costs and simplify supply-chain transactions between independent pharmacies, drug distributors and manufacturers. Drug prices vary widely, and reimbursement is squeezing margins. This provides significant opportunity for the Trxade model of price visibility and profit optimization.

To be cost effective, independent pharmacies often operate with minimal staff and are unable to conduct real-time price checks. The Trxade S2P platform provides these pharmacies newfound ability to easily compare drug prices across myriad suppliers and select the best pricing. This ability allows independent pharmacies to better compete with the big chains, and community pharmacies are flocking to the system. Trxade already serves and transacts business with more than 40% of the nation's 24,000 independent pharmacies, facilitating over $10 million of drug purchases every month. Given the widespread acceptance, Trxade intends to capture the lion's share of the independent-pharmacist, drug-purchasing market.

Consumer Advantages

Trxade's DelivMeds is a consumer-centric app that empowers patients with choice in selecting a pharmacy that will provide the convenience of home delivery. Furthering the feedback loop, all orders are placed with locally owned independent pharmacies, the backbone of Trxade's unique business strategy. This free service mobile app offers same-day prescription delivery from local pharmacies and also provides mail order options, should the patient choose to utilize this service.

The system makes it easy to add and manage prescriptions and provides refill reminders in one easy-to-use portal. In addition to making access easier for the consumer, DelivMeds provides cost management and greater accessibility to medications while feeding customers to the local pharmacy.

Trxade's Bonum Health telehealth service digitally connects patients with board-certified medical providers for primary care services through its mobile app and website or by visiting a Bonum Health Hub. The company plans to roll out Men's Health, Advanced Dermatology and Behavioral Health in the coming months. Unlike other telehealth services, no insurance or long-term contracts are necessary to receive care.

One-time primary care visits are priced at only $55, and the company also offers low-priced monthly and annual memberships. Bonum is adding more provider specialties and expanding its telehealth services to supplemental offerings including hearing, dental and vision services.

Bonum Health also offers telehealth services to employers to provide health coverage to their employees without requiring health insurance. Bonum telehealth service is powered by Trxade's technology, which connects patients to independent pharmacies, further enhancing its mission and vision of fostering growth and success in this competitive big-chain landscape.

Expansion Through Innovation

As Trxade continues building a huge base of pharmacies and consumers, the company consistently adds valuable programs. The company's Trxade Exchange opens and widens the distribution channel for the corner pharmacy. A pharmacy can view products from manufacturers, buying groups and wholesalers on a continuous, real-time basis, identifying where the lowest price exists for each product at any given point in time. The Trxade Exchange has provided pharmacies a new competitive edge and is recognized for its ease of use in searching for hard-to-find generic pharmaceuticals at substantially reduced prices.  

Trxade's RX Guru is an industry-leading, price-prediction model that integrates product-shortage insight into pharmacy-acquisition benchmarks to ascertain trends and pricing variances that result in significant purchasing opportunities. RX Guru affords members the opportunity to continuously benefit from real-price purchasing opportunities that are concealed from the rest of the industry. 

Trxade also maintains the most comprehensive retail, specialty and acute-care pharmaceutical product-shortage database in the country. Other industry competitors often restrict their efforts to specialty and acute-care product shortages and narrowly research oral generic products. Trxade's advanced prediction tools help members source hard-to-find products at affordable costs in a timely and easy-to-search process. 

Trxade identified and acted on a unique opportunity in a disjointed healthcare market. The company now delivers technology and services that have become indispensable to independent pharmacies and has helped make healthcare more accessible and affordable for the consumer. Trxade is establishing a new paradigm in healthcare as it continues to execute, adding more pharmacies and consumers, innovations, technology and services. Anyone with concerns about the healthcare dilemma should be heartened by Trxade's trajectory and realize that the market is kind to innovation and expansion.

Recognized Market Players

Once known as an online bookseller, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) has become the world's largest and most famous marketplace, providing a huge range of products. Amazon has developed streamlined, flexible ordering and delivery services that allow customers to find exactly what they want and have it delivered to their home, often within 24 hours. Recognizing opportunity, Amazon entered the pharma space with its PillPack platform to simplify the prescription process for consumers.

McKesson Corporation (NYSE: MCK) is known for supply-chain management in the pharmaceutical sector. The company delivers one-third of all pharmaceuticals in the United States; in real numbers, that means the company supplies more than 17,000 pharmacies. McKesson is also the primary pharmaceutical provider for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Teladoc Health Inc. (NYSE: TDOC) is improving healthcare access through a comprehensive, virtual-care solution serving both people and organizations. Its telemedicine system has provided millions of people around the world with consultations with doctors from a wide range of specialties. Its 92% success rate in resolving patients' problems demonstrates the potential of telemedicine to make healthcare accessible and effective.

CVS Health Corporation (NYSE:CVS) has a range of assets to help patients get the most out of healthcare. The company's digital services, care management, walk-in clinics and even cost-management systems provide effective solutions throughout the healthcare chain. Able to respond quickly to emerging health trends, CVS has recently announced extra resources focused on patient access to tackle the rising challenge of COVID-19.

While the world focuses on solving the COVID-19 challenge, savvy companies that are addressing the high cost of prescriptions and access to quality healthcare are set to provide huge benefits in the healthcare sector.

For more information on Trxade Group, please visit Trxade Group Inc. (NASDAQ: MEDS).

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