How many times have you sent your patients to the local natural grocery store or co-op to pick up something you think would be good for them to take? Whether it’s probiotics, Vitamin D, castor oil, prenatal vitamins, fish oil, or protein powder etc, you can be making money on these recommendations. Clients ask me all the time what I think they should be taking. This is a great way to make a mark up with very little time and effort.

Many of you may already stock these items.  You can open an account with Emerson Ecologics and Natural Partners, and order with them if you like to keep these types of supplements on hand.  You will make a better markup if you stock in-house products.  But if you want to simplify your front office and save time, you can get an account with Fullscript.

Fullscript carries many of the same products from trusted brands like Metagenics, Nordic Naturals, Integrative Therapeutics, Designs for Health and more.

Here’s how it works:

You create your practitioner profile in the Fullscript program.  Each time you want to recommend a product, you put your patients name and email address into the secured database on the site, and then you select products you wish to recommend to your patients. You can send an email prescription to the patient directly and they can take care of the payment part and process the order, or you can complete the entire order with your patient’s credit card when they checkout.  There is likely better patient compliance if you do it when they check out of your clinic, but our clinic has had great compliance just by emailing  the prescriptions.

There are settings to choose for automatic reminders to patients about refilling their previously purchased products. Patients like the option to buy online and to trust the brands we recommend to them.  Fullscript offers a 35% practitioner markup, and they deposit funds directly into your account a couple times per month. No bulk ordering, no stocking and no inventory on your end. If you wish to pass on the savings to friends and family you have a choice in settings to choose 0% markup or  something in between 0 – 35%.  Patients can’t see this part of the system.  You can choose whether they only see your prescriptions or you can allow them access to the entire online catalog so they can buy other products.  You can  set up your favorite products to expedite prescription writing. When patients spend at least $50 on their order, they get free shipping. Another perk is that you don’t have to worry about your stocked products expiring.  If you use Janeapp, you can even write recommendations right in your EHR and it integrates with Fullscript saving you more steps and time.  Fullscript plans to integrate with more EHRs in the future and is continually improving their platform.