How Eddie's Pharmacy built a billable clinical practice on top of 31 years of dispensing

The challenge

Eddie's Pharmacy has served Sacramento's LGBTQ+ community since 1993 and wanted to expand the clinical care that community could access locally. The team was ready to provide services such as:

• HIV and STI testing
• PEP
• Naloxone counselling
• Travel health
• Vaccinations

But the underlying workflow was not designed for that kind of care. Scheduling, clinical documentation, and billing each lived in a separate system. Staff were effectively repeating work for the same patient across three platforms, while the longer appointments required for clinical care competed with the pace of dispensing.

"We had three platforms at the same time, which really didn't work. You're doing work three times for one patient."

Reimbursement created a second pressure point: claims and coding took time to manage, and patients did not always recognise that a pharmacist's clinical expertise required the same administrative support as other care settings. Eddie's needed a practical way to make clinical services part of its everyday operation, rather than an additional burden on the team.

What we delivered

MedMe became Eddie's first clinical EMR and brought the patient journey into one workflow.

1. Patients can book online or walk in, complete intake, insurance, and demographic information before the pharmacist begins the appointment.
2. Service-specific forms and preset clinical questions support consistent care across HIV and STI testing, PEP, naloxone counselling, travel health, and vaccinations.
3. Insurance-card OCR helps confirm coverage during intake, and E/M codes are available in a dropdown when it is time to bill.
4. The system is configured for California protocols and can be adapted as Eddie's adds new clinical services.

"What MedMe did was make it easier. It had scheduling, it had clinical notes, it had the billing as well, all in one."

By keeping scheduling, notes, intake, and billing together, MedMe gave the pharmacy a workflow built around the way its team actually provides care.

Results

Eddie's has grown from one or two clinical services to around 10, without needing to rebuild its process for each new offering.

• Pharmacists now spend more of their day in consultations and less time moving between systems or handling clerical follow-up.
• With scheduling, clinical notes, and E/M code selection in one system, the team can complete the administrative side of a visit without moving between platforms.
• Eddie's can now run clinical services alongside dispensing through one connected workflow and add services as community needs evolve.

"I love the billing feature. The fact that the dropdown codes are there that we can choose easily. It makes it easier for the pharmacists and the pharmacy staff to enter the billing in, makes their time more efficient and billing more accurate as well. That's what I love the most, honestly."

Why it matters

Eddie's Pharmacy shows what clinical expansion looks like when it is rooted in a specific community need. For its LGBTQ+ patients, access to HIV testing, PrEP, PEP, and sexual-health care is not simply a matter of convenience; it can depend on finding a provider they trust and can reach quickly.

The challenge for an independent pharmacy is making that care sustainable alongside dispensing. Without a connected workflow, each new service adds more scheduling, documentation, and billing work to the team's day. MedMe gives Eddie's the infrastructure to keep clinical care personal while making it easier to deliver consistently.

That matters because independent pharmacies are often best positioned to respond quickly when a patient needs support. The workflow helps ensure that the time saved from administration goes back into patient care, not just higher volume.

Customer story

Josh, owner-pharmacist of Eddie's Pharmacy, came to Sacramento with more than a decade of experience in rural and small-chain independent pharmacy. He built Eddie's around care tailored to the LGBTQ+ community and sees independence as its greatest advantage. "Being independent, you can service your community in a more tailored way than a big box or a chain pharmacy can," he says. "We can tailor our services towards every customer individually."

For Josh, the hardest part of expanding clinical care was the mindset shift. Many pharmacists assume clinical services will take more time than they are worth. His experience is that the model changes once teams see the community benefit, and the growth that can follow.

That value is clear in the patients Eddie's supports: someone who found a more comfortable place to discuss sexual health and HIV prevention, and another who was able to access time-sensitive care after a potential exposure. With MedMe handling the clinical workflow and billing, Eddie's can make this model of care practical while giving pharmacists more time to focus on patients.

Advice for other pharmacists

Josh's advice to other independent owners is to let go of the dispensing-only mindset. He is upfront that changing a team's daily routine is a real operational challenge, but says what wins people over is watching clinical care improve patient health and build community trust. Reimbursement, he adds, is still a constant fight, which is why he thinks building these workflows on a dedicated clinical platform from day one is what makes advanced care sustainable.

"Most pharmacists don't know what they don't know. If you're only using old-school paper, you may not realize how much more time you could spend focused on your patient with the automation and efficiency MedMe offers."