Curtis McEntire President, President, Trulla

The roots of Trulla date back to 2006 when Curtis McEntire, the CEO of Trulla, was first exposed to the massive technology gap within health system pharmacies. Curtis was working for a large integrated health system where he was responsible for the pharmacy supply chain that had an annual drug spend of over $200 million per year and $20 million in drug inventory. At the time, the health system was experiencing several complexities as drug shortages began to spike in the industry. In one specific situation, a critical medication was required by many infants but, due to its shortage, another medication was provided. Unfortunately, it led to severe adverse patient events for each of them.

After this event when an audit was conducted by the company, they found that two of their hospitals had the required medication but it was being given to adults who could have easily handled something else. This upset Curtis to the core. He pulled out his phone, opened the Home Depot app, and said, “If I want to search for a shovel at Home Depot, I can see which store has it, how many they have, what aisle, and what shelf it is on. But we have medications that are expensive, critical to patient care, and expire, and we can’t see what we have?”

Curtis realized that technology gaps for managing the pharmacy supply chain as a “system” had been a significant shortfall for health systems across the country. Thus, he decided to develop technology to positively impact patient care, improve workflows, and deliver cost savings for health systems. Trulla, which means “shovel” in Latin, was born in 2018.

Delivering a Unique Procurement Platform

Most healthcare systems spend 100s of millions of dollars in purchasing pharmaceutical products. This ordering process involves several complexities, including: drug shortages, multiple suppliers, compliance requirements, disparate ordering practices and portals, thousands of medications, and constantly changing pricing contracts and rebates. Trulla simplifies this process by generating all orders within one application and produces significant cost savings by guiding users to best practices for medication purchases. The company also has the ability to provide medication inventory visibility across the entire health system by integrating with various third-party devices and stitching all of it together in a single view.

Trulla offers a very unique procurement platform that is designed to meet the needs of an entire healthcare organization instead of a single hospital or ordering location. The software supports a single hub for advanced analytics, receiving and sending feeds from primary wholesalers and other suppliers, bridging the gap left by manual suppliers, and integration with drug medication libraries, inventory devices, and 340B split billing vendors.

“The analytics are able to identify optimized procurement practice changes in real-time while the software enables the execution of these changes in real-time. This combination allows the most inexperienced user to make the correct purchasing decision every time in Trulla’s cloud-based application,” explains Curtis.

Evolving and Overcoming Challenges

Trulla’s founders have decades of experience in the pharmacy sector and hence they have an in-depth understanding of the significant shortfalls in the industry. They needed a tool to provide guidance and assurances for the entire health system to capture as many savings as possible without ignoring the intricacies of pharmacy regulations. They began by evaluating the solutions available and quickly realized that there weren’t any tools that could address the evolving needs of the industry. After years of efforts struggling with manual steps and limited systems, they decided to form Trulla. They quickly engaged with development partners and began trailblazing. Some of our milestones have included integration with key pharmacy systems, such as primary wholesalers and 340B split billing vendors, streamlining internal transfer processes, and supporting comprehensive data aggregation into a single solution for an analytics system that is beyond anything ever before seen in pharmacy,” states ,Curtis During the Trulla founders’ time in the industry, a major challenge faced was to deal with vendors that didn’t have the background to understand pharmacy’s needs. Today, Trulla efficiently addresses this challenge by making client communications a top priority. The competent team at Trulla seeks feedback and ideas from clients during their regular client calls for future development.

“Some of our internal projects that have sprouted from these calls include a digital inventory solution, various streamlined and polished workflows, more comprehensive analytics, and other major accomplishments. It’s been a real pleasure to be able to offer weekly updates and releases to our software based on user feedback,” states Curtis.

The Diligent Team Behind Trulla’s Success

Today, Trulla has come a long way since its inception and the success of the company can be attributed to its visionary founding members and its highly driven and proficient team. The Trulla team is composed of very skilled and diverse individuals that are passionate about solving the problems that their clients are struggling with. They communicate often and clearly with each other and with their clients to stay on the same page and to keep the vision of Trulla crisp.

“We’re a small company, so each team member has to come to the table with drive and experience. Because the Trulla team has significant pharmacy experience, we are able to quickly understand the needs and concerns of our clients. We frequently meet together and work together on setting best practices and improving the Trulla software,” affirms Curtis.

Aims to Become a Single Hub for as Many Pharmacy Needs as Possible

Currently, Trulla is finalizing its initial development. With the core software established for procurement from locations within the health system and external suppliers (e.g., wholesalers and direct sources), optional 340B compliance logic, and undeniably powerful analytic tools, the team is poised to fine-tune Trulla. It also intends to continue developing additional modules according to industry needs and client feedback.

“Already Trulla has become the tool that we all wish we had ten, twenty years ago, but we aren’t finished yet, not by a long shot. The real goal of Trulla is to provide not only a one-stop-shop for procurement but a single hub for as many pharmacy needs as possible,” concludes Curtis.