The prescription drug sector has a lot on its pad. Hints of price control legislation, shifting prescribing and pickup patterns arising from the pandemic, and all against the backdrop of what some sources estimate was a drop in new prescriptions of close to 40 percent in 2020.
Is there a remedy for rising costs, changing behaviors and lost income? You bet. It’s the sleek smartphone app, transcending confusion and keeping the pharmacy sector properly medicated.
It’s all here in PYMNTS’ latest update to the Provider Ranking of Prescription Apps, where we discover that behind the fog of economic uncertainty and malingering COVID-19 worries is the stability people look for in all matters medical or, in this case, all matters medicine.
Either way it’s a tonic for the times we’re living through. Get your jab(s) and join us on a trip through the latest scores. There’s been so little movement you might think it’s the drugs.
It’s not. Allow us to demonstrate.
The Top 5
So many companies keeping their chart rankings must mean a whole lot of happy customer-users. It would certainly help explain the tranquility observed in this ranking update.
We start at the top, naturally, where the GoodRX app continues to reign at No. 1, still riding high on a 20 percent revenue rise reported in Q1.
At No. 2 it’s SingleCare – Rx Coupons holding down the fort and offering “up to 80 percent off” some prescriptions. Nothing wrong with that.
RxSaver Prescription Discounts sticks at No. 3 for another month. They’re being acquired by GoodRX (see them at No. 1).
In a strip mall near you — and at No. 4 on this update — is the CVS Caremark app.
Finishing out the Top 5 at No. 5 for another cycle is the app of a grocery giant, Publix Pharmacy, proving that buying almost everything under one roof has its advantages.
The Top 10
We continue to No. 6, where the OptumRx app remains. It also gets top experience marks from users, or so we hear, and CX goes a long way in the app world, prescription or otherwise.
Pharmacy benefit management (PBM) app Express Scripts is not budging from its position at No. 7 for another month, and PBM is good like that. At its best, predictable, steady and stable.
The same can be said of No. 8 RxLocal, securely messaging prescriptions as an app ought.
We’re always bemused — but never confused — about the popularity of pharmacies in grocery stores (see No. 5 in the Top 5). Here again at No. 9 it’s Kroger Rx Savings Club — “KrogerRxSC”
to its users and partners — of which there are many.
Only one change to the Provider Ranking of Prescription Apps this cycle, and it’s a capper.
The one-tap RefillRx app makes its debut in the Top 10 at No. 10, showing the democratic dynamism the drives these rankings. There’s room for everyone — if they can make the cut.
Is there a pill for that? Maybe there should be. A nasal spray at least. Nothing OTC, please.
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