Medication errors are costly in both dollars and lives lost. Each year 7,000-9,000 people die due to medication errors, plus it cost some $40 billion to treat patients with medication errors, according to a study by the National Institute of Health. The NIH also found that medication non-compliance costs the US healthcare system between $100 and $300 billion annually.
For Larry Margolis those statistics hit home in the most tragic way possible with the loss of his daughter due to a medication error. His grief fuelled his desire to help solve the problem with the building of PeronalRX, an online mail order pharmacy that offers personalized service. This founder’s journey is based on my interview with Margolis.
Margolis originally got involved with the mail order pharmacy business as a passive investor. It was presented to him as an opportunity to take care of medication management using individual dose packs, which had been available but typically only used in hospital or prison settings. “I understood first hand through an unfortunate medication error for my daughter. So that hit home right away to say, well, medication management just makes sense. And adherence packaging makes sense, and no mistakes makes even more sense,” says Margolis.
Margolis had a vision for where the business could go and so he went from passive investor to active investor, founder and CEO of the newly named PersonalRX. While mail order pharmacies have been around for some time as cheap, low service alternatives to retail pharmacies, Margolis moved the company in the direction of high service with comparable cost to retail pharmacies. Every PersonalRX patient is reviewed by a pharmacist for medication reconciliation to understand which doctors prescribe which medicines. Patients, especially the elderly, often lose track of their medications increasing the chances of either over or under medicating.
“Every patient here has what we call a patient care coordinator, a live person when you call here, you get that person, you don’t speak to somebody new each time. Health care has to be personal,” says Margolis. PersonalRX uses AI to manage these complex relationships more efficiently, allowing the company to offer such personal services with access to a highly trained healthcare professional.
Not surprisingly the company services a predominantly older demographic, who more often require personal service and prefer talking to their personal pharmacist without having to work through an App or a complicated online experience, though they do have an App and customers across all demographics with the focus on the 41 million Americans who take 5 or more medications.
According to Margolis, the business grew 636% in revenue over the last 12 months with some 75 employees working at its main facility in East Rutherford New Jersey or its satellite operations in Brooklyn, New York where they ship to 45 states. The company’s growth expanded rapidly with its increase in partners such as age in place service companies and home care workers. “We’re growing rapidly through partner programs, and I think that’s our future,” says Margolis who also states that he’s looking to expand to a 50,000 square foot facility in New Jersey and to add facilities in Florida and out West.
The company has raised $17 million in funding to date, with most of it coming from venture fund Digital Wellness Technology. According to investment proposal documents provided to the SEC in 2020, the company’s goal is to reach $300-plus million in annual revenue within 5 years.
Margolis grew up in West Orange, New Jersey in what he describes as an entrepreneurial family. “My father was an attorney. He was also in the automobile business. And he represented an automobile dealer. My mother was an entrepreneur. She ran an interior design firm. I started a car stereo store when I was 16 and had some success in there,” says Margolis. He ultimately found his way to Wall Street working for Bear Stearns for five years before joining with a few partners to start a broker dealer and became the CEO of Link Asset Management.
His and family’s life with the death of his daughter would change in a way few can imagine. “It changed me. And it changed my thinking as to what I might do with my life going forward. People used to say to me and my wife, how could you just keep going doing what you were doing. And the answer is you really have very little choice, and how do we embrace that and make something different,” says Margolis. And that difference for Margolis is the building of PersonalRX.
As for the future? “There is a huge need to take care of people and to take care of their medication needs and their health needs and be that quarterback. We actually speak to patients more than their doctors speak to them. So, we’re at that corner of where technology, health care, patient access, personalization all comes together so that we can help people out. So, where we are in 10 years is to have a much, much larger business, yet maintain the same approach and the same personalized attention that patients need,” concludes Margolis.
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