Independent Pharmacy Cooperative’s Member Performance team exists to help you turn the contract you already have into the profit and stability you actually need. It is a primary-wholesaler–focused, no-cost service that helps you better understand your supply agreement, sharpen your buying strategy, and ultimately strengthen your bottom line
Connect with the Member Performance Team
Is Member Performance Right For You?
Before diving into what Member Performance does, consider a few questions:
- Do you know, with confidence, your current buying strategy is the right one? Could you be leaving 1–3 percentage points of gross profit on the table?
- Can you quickly calculate your true final cost on a drug once rebates, invoice discounts, and quarterly adjustments are applied?
- How clearly do you understand your primary supply agreement; its levers, compliance expectations, and how your purchasing mix affects rebate performance?
- If you handed your books to an outside expert, would you know how your pharmacy compares to the broader market?
- When industry changes hit; new reimbursement rules, brand price shifts, or contract renewals, do you have a trusted partner helping you anticipate the impact instead of reacting after the fact?
If you said yes to any of those questions, then engaging with Member Performance is not a “nice to have,” but a meaningful strategic advantage.
What Member Performance Actually Does
At its core, the Member Performance team helps you optimize the value of your primary wholesaler contract, so you can increase gross profit while staying operationally sane. IPC’s Scott Wittnebel, Sr. Member Advisor, IPC Member Performance, describes it as “finding ways to help you optimize the value of your purchasing contracts…so you make more gross profit by influencing your buying strategy.”
Here is what that looks like in practice:
- Contract and strategy review: The team starts by understanding how you buy today, how your mix fits your current agreement, and what your goals and constraints are.
- Supply agreement optimization: They identify which levers in your contract matter most to your pharmacy, align you with the right tools, and model the expected impact of incremental changes, rather than overwhelming your team with a complete overhaul.
- True-cost clarity: They teach you how to predict final cost by pulling together reimbursement, rebate structures, effective rates, invoice discounts, and quarterly adjustments, so you are not misled by the number on the screen.
- Ongoing, incremental improvements: Member Performance works with you over time, making small, testable adjustments, like selectively moving a brand outside your primary—and tracking how those choices affect compliance, rebates, and margin.
Members who actively engage with this process commonly see a 1–3 percentage point lift in gross profit, achieved step by step rather than through risky, wholesale changes. Its designed to help you get more value from your primary wholesaler agreement that drives most of your purchasing and rebates.
How Member Performance Supports IPC’s Five Pillars
Member Performance may not own every pillar, but its work meaningfully influences all five.
Purchasing Power
Optimizes your primary contract, aligns purchasing strategy with compliance, and helps you “nibble at the edges” to unlock more value.
Growth & Expansion
Identifies financial and purchasing opportunities that can support new services, locations, or expanded care models.
Operational Efficiency
Reduces the time and chaos of chasing prices everywhere, helping you buy strategically instead of spending hours a day ordering.
Financial Clarity
Reviews your books, benchmarks your performance, and demystifies rebates, final cost, and profitability at the prescription level.
Team Empowerment
Helps owners translate strategy into actionable buying processes and shares best practices gathered from pharmacies nationwide.
The team often uncovers additional opportunities as they “bite at the edges,” for example, spotting a growth or expansion project that can be quantified and stress-tested before you commit scarce capital. Member Performance also frequently connects members to other IPC resources such as government relations, pharmacy services, and partner networks like Health Mart Atlas and the Vendor Advantage Network when those partners can advance your broader strategy.
What the Experience Feels Like Over Time
Engaging with Member Performance is designed to feel collegial and supportive, not like an audit. A typical journey might look like this:
- Discovery and baseline: You walk through how you are buying today and what your agreement says, and where you feel the most pressure (cash flow, DIR, inventory, staff workload, etc.).
- Strategy and modeling: Together, you define realistic goals; margin lift, stability, or preparing for growth, and map out which contractual levers to pull first and what the expected impact will be.
- Implementation with your team: Changes are rolled out in manageable steps so your staff can execute them without disrupting patient care.
- Measurement and adjustment: Over the life of the agreement, you track results, revisit assumptions, and refine your plan as market conditions, reimbursements, and your own goals evolve.
“When you can keep a pharmacy afloat, you are not only helping that owner, but…all the people that work there and all the people that come there.” Said Nick Secrest, Vice President of Member Performance.
Why Now, and What’s the Catch?
There is no fee to work with Member Performance. As a member-owned cooperative, IPC built this team to work specifically for you. “It doesn’t cost you anything. There’s only room to gain. Why not?” said Nick Secrest.
This matters even more today, with rapid changes in reimbursement models, performance metrics, and drug pricing creating real risk for pharmacies that are “not paying attention.” Member Performance exists to help you stay ahead of those shifts rather than finding out months later that your margin has quietly eroded.
For the pharmacist who thinks, “I’ve heard this before; others have promised and underdelivered,” the difference is that IPC is led by independent owners who live in the same reality you do and Member Performance is one of the ways that cooperative structure shows up in your day-to-day business, not just at dividend time. Whether you run a single store, manage a multi-site operation, are just getting started, or are planning a transition that protects your legacy, a clearer, stronger contract strategy is one of the most controllable levers you have.
If those opening questions hit close to home, the next step is simple: start a conversation with IPC’s Member Performance team and ask them to walk you through how your current agreement and buying habits are truly performing. Engaging now can help you protect your margin, support your team, and secure the future of the communities that rely on you.
Connect with Member Performance today: [email protected]
