New Cardinal Health service targets mail-order pharmacy market

DUBLIN, Ohio — Cardinal Health unveiled a new feature that better organizes drugs sent out to its mail-order pharmacy customers.

The EZ Cart system is important to Cardinal because the company considers mail-order pharmacies a strategic growth area for its business. About 20 percent of prescription drug expenditures flow through mail-order pharmacies, according to some estimates. Cardinal has said it wants to identify supply chain “pain points” in the mail-order market.

Cardinal thinks its solution is unique and gives the company an edge over competitors who also want a larger share of the mail-order market, said Tara Schumacher, director of media relations at Cardinal.

Mail-order companies often have to spend time reorganizing drugs sent to them. Cardinal’s EZ Cart system sorts drugs into separate containers that are then placed into bins. The bins are assigned certain spots at the mail-order company’s loading area and taken away to other designated areas, eliminating the need to re-sort the drugs before storing them. The company claims it will cut labor costs and increase drug security because the pharmaceuticals are secured with numbered seals.

There are a series of regulations which will require better ways to secure identify and track drugs — largely to protect against counterfeit drugs. Some of those standards are expected in April. But Schumacher said this is less about security than “an efficiency play” for Cardinal.