Patient Outreach: 101

by Robyn Marlow

If you hadn’t noticed, the North Sunflower Pharmacy dispenses a lot more than life-saving medicine. They also make a point of dispensing a lot of life-saving information as well.

One of the things Pharmacy Director Mike Gilbow brought with him when he joined the North Sunflower family seven years ago was a strong interest in connecting with the community. He believes that’s one of the important ways North Sunflower can help provide better care to its patients.

“On average, a person sees a doctor between two and three times a year,” Mike told us. “Over that same year, most patients will see a pharmacist an average of 35 times per year. By working directly with their doctors, that gives us an opportunity to help serve them better. That’s just Patient Outreach 101.”

When Mike owned a pharmacy in Drew, and later a co-owner of a pharmacy in Belzoni, he knew he wanted to be part of the Good Neighbor Pharmacy network. They are a network of 3,500 independent pharmacies nationwide, who run monthly patient outreach campaigns providing important information about everything from Alzheimer’s to Colorectal cancer screenings.

Free ChildPrint ID Kits

It was important to Mike that North Sunflower continue to work with the Good Neighbor Pharmacy team to continue better serving our patients. This month, we are working with them to provide Child ID Kits as part of August’s Child Safety Month.

“This is our most popular campaign of the year,” Mike told us. “I took one kit for every grandchild when our family went on vacation last week. It just gave me such peace of mind knowing I had those with me, should anything happen”.

Nationally, Good Neighbor Pharmacies gave out 87,000 Child ID kits. We understand that the way this year’s campaign is going, they will give out even more this year. We even had to order more kits after we gave away so many.