How Smarter Shipping Saves Boston Medical Center pharmacists 23,000 hours a year
“We work with Pitney Bowes to devise rules so we can take the thinking out of our employees’ hands and put it into the application. It helps us get medication to our customers faster and save on shipping costs.”
Who is Boston Medical Center?
Boston Medical Center (BMC) is an academic medical center in Boston, Massachusetts, serving one of the most diverse patient populations in the country. As New England’s largest safety-net hospital, it offers comprehensive, high-quality care, including a Level I trauma center, to a diverse, largely underserved population. With growing prescription delivery volumes, and distributed pharmacy operations, BMC needed a secure, scalable way to manage shipping across locations, without adding operational burden or risking compliance, and consistently prioritizing their patient promise of "Exceptional Care Without Exception“.
The Challenge
Boston Medical Center operates 7 pharmacy locations, each handling both central fill and direct-to-patient orders, creating 14+ cost centers that must be carefully tracked and allocated
Shipping costs are charged back to the originating pharmacy, making accuracy essential. As prescription volumes increased, so did operational complexity, including inconsistent carrier and service selection, unnecessary overnight shipments, manual reconciliation against FedEx invoices, and limited carrier data retention for audit preparation.
BMC needed a secure, scalable pharmacy shipping solution that could control shipping decisions, allocate spend accurately, and maintain compliance-ready records, without adding operational burden inside the pharmacy.
The Solution
Boston Medical Center chose Pitney Bowes' secure, cloud-based multicarrier shipping platform in order to automate their prescription fulfillment process by working directly with their pharmacy management system, QS1/RedSail. Staff can process prescriptions in one single solution to ship from the carrier that best meets the patient's individual needs.
The Pitney Bowes prescription shipping solution makes it easy to select the right carrier and service, whether that is to get it there faster, or ensure the lowest possible cost. Custom business rules designed by Boston Medical Center restrict users capabilities, so the software automatically prevents wasteful or unauthorized shipments. With complete visibility into all shipping activity and spend in one place, BMC can manage patient chargebacks accurately and keep prescription delivery fast, consistent, and compliant. Plus, pharmacy leadership can easily monitor trends, costs per patient, carrier performance, and identify opportunities to reduce shipping costs over time.
For Boston Medical Center, pharmacy shipping is not just about printing labels. It requires tight cost control, accurate chargebacks, compliance-ready record retention, and seamless integration with QS1. Pitney Bowes provides a secure, cloud-based pharmacy shipping platform that embeds business rules, centralizes carrier data, and protects audit readiness, giving hospital pharmacy leaders full visibility and control over prescription delivery operations.
Audit ready by design
During an audit, Boston Medical Center was required to verify that a prescription shipment had been sent and confirm exactly when it left the pharmacy. By that time, the carrier’s barcode-level tracking data had expired, as most carriers retain detailed shipment records for only about 120 days.
Because BMC uses Pitney Bowes shipping software, the team was able to quickly access archived shipment data and produce documentation showing when the prescription was processed and mailed. That internal system of record helped satisfy audit requirements and avoid potential penalties. Especially in regulated healthcare and pharmacy environments, maintaining secure shipment records isn’t optional, but essential for compliance, visibility, and operational control.