MedExpress Opens at Cebu Doctors’ University Hospital

Now a pharmacy with  a guaranteed personalized and professional service is within reach for every Cebuano. MedExpress Outpatient Hospital Pharmacy opened at Cebu Doctors’ University Hospital (CDUH) along Osmeña Blvd., Cebu City last Dec. 4.

MedExpress has nine existing branches located in key cities nationwide. It is an outpatient hospital pharmacy located in the premises of its partner hospital. MedExpress only partners with the premiere hospitals in the country. For the Visayas, they have chosen Cebu Doctors’ University Hospital.

“We are excited that we are in the Visayas, in Cebu. What is even more exciting is for us to partner with the premiere hospital (in Cebu). Our other branches partner only with premiere hospitals,” said Robert Lim, president of MedExpress.

Apart from being a pharmacy selling the medicines needed by patients, MedExpress is distinctive in the sense that it offers additional services such as delivery or pick up, healthcare services, a confidential profile of patients, medication counseling, patient medication history, and patient medication compliance among others.

(L-R) CDUH President and Chairman of the Board Dr. Potenciano Larrazabal, Jr. and MedExpress President Robert Lim.

With medical counseling, MedExpress’ pharmacists offer consultancy sessions with the patients wherein they discuss with them the medicines they purchased. They tell them (patients) what the medicines are for, what to expect and avoid on the said medicines while on medication. Lim said such service is offered in first world countries.

Patient medication history on the other hand, is another service, that allows MedExpress to record all of the medicines that the patients have bought from them including herbal, supplement and vitamins. The objective of the service is to detect potential adverse chemical reactions of drugs or medicines. This is salient most especially for patients who are taking various medications at a time. “There’s a system to detect to avoid (adverse chemical reactions),” enthused Lim.

Patient medication compliance is equally systematic and useful for the reason it detects in the system MedExpress has in advance, when a patient is running out of his or her medicines. This goes for those patients who are maintaining certain drug prescriptions from their doctors like hypertension and diabetes. This follow through system is made possible by the online pharmacists who compose MedExpress’ call center based in Manila. They contact the customers to remind them of their medicines should they have not bought yet after initial notifications made by the pharmacy’s system.

(L-R) During the opening and blessing of MedExpress, Dr. Larrazabal, wife Zeny and CDUH Administrator Engr. Oscar Tuason.

Other than the medication compliance, the call center also operates 24/7 to receive inquiries from patients who’ll call them. “We are backed up in Manila with a 50-seat call center and can communicate directly with the patient, and allow the patient to contact the call center to ask regarding the medicine, for free. Online pharmacists will serve you” said Lim.

For their delivery service, any purchase above P750 is charged for free while a minimal fee of P50 is pegged at orders that are lower than the mentioned purchasing amount. Apart from one-of-a-kind and first class services to consumers, MedExpress also practices the most important factor of all to pharmacy or consumer service—affordable and competitively lower priced medicines. “Cost and compliance are considered in buying medicines. We have cheap and safe medicines. You are assured of the cheapest medicine,” said Dr. Potenciano Larrazabal Jr., owner of MedExpress Outpatient Hospital Pharmacy in CDUH.

CDUH will open its next MedExpress pharmacies to its hospital branches in Mactan, Naga, Negros and Ormoc among others. “This is something new to us, so we’re going to look first, and then do the necessary expansion,” said Larrazabal.

MedExpress is present in the following hospitals: Davao Doctors’s Hospital, Capitol Medical Center, The Medical City, Makati Medical Center, St. Luke’s Medical Hospital, Mary Mediatrix and University of Perpetual Help Dalta Medical Center in Las Pinas among others.

 Photo above: Facade of the newly opened MedExpress Drugstore Outpatient Hospital Pharmacy.