Most pharmacies know what they spend on delivery.
They know what they pay their drivers or courier. They can see mileage, invoices, vehicle expenses, and other obvious transportation costs.
But that doesn't necessarily tell them what the delivery operation is really costing the pharmacy.
A failed delivery may require another trip. A medication may need to be replaced. Pharmacy staff may spend time tracking down what happened. An inefficient route may require more driver hours than necessary.
None of those costs are as easy to see as a courier invoice or driver wage.
The true cost of pharmacy delivery is what it takes to successfully get the medication where it needs to go—not simply what you pay to move it.
When pharmacy leaders think about delivery cost, they naturally start with the expenses they can easily identify.
For an internal delivery operation, that might include:
For an outsourced operation, it might simply be the courier invoice.
Those costs matter. But they only describe what the pharmacy spends directly on transportation.
Consider an LTC route that looks inexpensive based on driver wages and mileage. If that route regularly runs into overtime, makes repeat trips to the same facilities, or requires pharmacy staff to resolve delivery problems, the real cost is higher.
This is why looking only at the visible transportation expense can create a false sense of efficiency.
A low delivery rate doesn't automatically mean you have a low-cost delivery operation.
The difference becomes clearer when something goes wrong.
Suppose a medication can't be successfully delivered.
The cost isn't necessarily limited to the original trip.
The pharmacy may now have to:
If the medication can't be recovered, there may also be a write-off.
Now a single delivery has created additional transportation cost, medication cost, and staff time.
This is why delivery reliability has a financial impact beyond the delivery fee itself.
A $15 delivery that fails and requires hours of additional work may ultimately be more expensive than a higher-priced delivery that succeeds the first time.
The cost of failure belongs in the delivery conversation too.
A route doesn't have to fail to be expensive.
It can simply be inefficient.
Facility wait times, unnecessary repeat trips, poor geographic density, late route starts, and excessive mileage can all increase the amount of time and resources required to complete the same number of deliveries.
For example, imagine two drivers each complete 20 LTC deliveries.
One finishes in five hours.
The other takes eight.
The delivery count is the same, but the cost of completing those deliveries isn't.
That's why what LTC pharmacies measure about delivery matters. Looking at route time, repeat trips, facility delays, and geographic patterns can help explain why some deliveries cost more than others.
Delivery heat maps can also help make geographic inefficiencies easier to see.
Cost per delivery isn't only about how many deliveries you make. It's also about how efficiently the resources behind those deliveries are being used.
One of the easiest delivery costs to overlook never happens inside a vehicle.
It happens inside the pharmacy.
When delivery problems occur, pharmacy employees often become part of the resolution process.
Someone may need to call the driver. Someone else may contact the facility. Another employee may investigate the order, answer a patient question, prepare a replacement, or arrange another delivery.
Each individual issue may only take a few minutes.
Across hundreds or thousands of deliveries, that time can add up.
And more importantly, every minute pharmacy employees spend managing delivery problems is time they aren't spending on pharmacy work.
At GO2 Delivery, the objective isn't simply to provide transportation. Pharmacy delivery programs are designed around visibility, documented chain of custody, route management, exception handling, and performance reporting so the pharmacy doesn't have to spend its day figuring out what happened after a medication left the building.
The value of a delivery partner should therefore be measured by more than the price per stop.
It should also include how much work the delivery operation creates—or removes—for the pharmacy team.
When pharmacy leaders evaluate delivery, it's easy to compare the numbers that are easiest to see.
Driver wage versus courier rate.
Mileage versus delivery fee.
Internal fleet versus outsourced provider.
Those comparisons matter, but they don't tell the entire story.
The bigger question is:
What does it cost us to complete a successful delivery?
That includes transportation, driver time, repeat trips, failures, write-offs, staff involvement, and the additional work created when something doesn't go according to plan.
A delivery model that looks inexpensive at first can become costly when those hidden expenses are included.
And a delivery model with a higher visible rate may create value elsewhere by reducing failures, staff involvement, redeliveries, and administrative work.
The objective isn't simply to find the cheapest delivery.
It's to understand which delivery model gives the pharmacy the best combination of cost, reliability, visibility, and service.
If you know what you're spending on delivery but aren't sure what the operation is actually costing you, GO2 can help you take a closer look.
Pharmacies should consider direct transportation expenses along with driver time, mileage, vehicles, repeat trips, redeliveries, medication write-offs, pharmacy staff involvement, and other costs created when deliveries don't go as planned.
A low rate only represents the visible transportation charge. If the delivery regularly creates repeat trips, failures, write-offs, overtime, or pharmacy staff work, the total cost to the business can be significantly higher.
Look beyond total delivery spend. Cost should be considered alongside delivery volume, route time, repeat trips, facility delays, exceptions, write-offs, and staff involvement to understand what it actually takes to complete a successful delivery.