NCPA MLC and ATRIUMX 2025 Recaps

Over the past two weeks IPC has attended and exhibited at two important conferences for independent pharmacy owners. I hope you find the brief recaps below informative and valuable.

Once again NCPA put on an excellent conference for multi-store owners. If you haven’t attended this event in the past, it should be one to add to your schedule.

There was an excellent list of speakers and presentations over the three days, and you can find the full list here.

Here are some of the highlights that we experienced.

We all are aware of the strong headwinds facing independent pharmacy and this conference gave us an opportunity to hear straight from those who are driving change that will matter to each and every owner. Pairing the insights provided by Bill Roth and his insights into the industry with the work NCPA is doing in Washington to make progress on PBM reform and other key legislation, we are able to gain a clearer picture of where we are and where we are headed. The key takeaway is it is important to have that big picture of the industry confirming why participation in these advocacy efforts is so critical. Congressional leaders and your representatives need to hear from you, not just IPC and NCPA. When we reach out with a call to action, it is critical that you act. We heard from Doug Hoey, John Martin and Ronna Hauser how much the emails to congressional offices impact the conversations. If you are not a member of NCPA, now is the time to join. Here is a link for IPC members to get signed up and stand in unison with your peers. IPC and NCPA work closely together to ensure that your voice is heard because we need the right changes to be made to ensure the success of your store and together we can achieve it.

The other theme we heard among the presentations was more boots on the ground actions you can take to move your business forward. Some of the topics were around leadership, security, scaling services across your organization and payer-pharmacy network partnerships.

The conference wrapped up with Kelley Babcock, from LGF, who put a bow on it with her four D’s. Take one thing from each day at the conference and make a Decision on what work on in your pharmacy when you get home. Once they had their list of three things, attendees put meetings on their calendars with team members at home to ensure they Delegate to a project lead, Drive the process and Deliver results.

Of course, the content is important and for us the networking is critical. NCPA does a great job of attracting successful multi-store owners to this conference, many of whom are IPC members and many others are finding the exciting things we are doing unique among GPOs. At shows like NCPA MLC we are proud to stand out from the crowd with how we support the success and profitability of our member’s stores.

See you next year!

Sometimes firsts don’t live up to your expectations. You are pent up with anticipation and excitement to try that new Italian restaurant that you have heard so many good things about. Even after the appetizer came out and was just ok, you still hold out hope that the second course will be excellent, and it just isn’t.

AtriumX on the other hand did not disappoint. It was more like that first summer tomato or ear of sweet corn. You have been eating tomatoes all winter and spring and they’re good, but that first locally grown, picked yesterday tomato is different. And different sometimes means better.

Nicolette Mathey, founder of Atrium24, touted AtriumX as a different type of conference, an unconference. While the format has been used in other industries and in Silicon Valley, independent pharmacy owners had not been exposed to it yet. Wikipedia defines an unconference as a “participant-driven meeting” and a “reduced emphasis on formal speeches and instead emphasize informal connections.”

AtriumX delivered on that. There was an excellent blend of exhibitor and attendee engagement and interaction. The attendees drove the agenda and topics and many stood up and got out of their comfort zone to lead the breakout sessions. This format fostered deep connections between participants. I attended one breakout on marketing facilitated by both Atrium24 and the Marketing Manager for a pharmacy. Participants wrote down questions which were the seeds for the discussion. Questions that arose were, “How do you get past the gatekeeper?” or “When should I hire a marketer?” The facilitators and other owners and staff offered their experiences and solutions. Once the breakout was done, people sought each other out to continue the conversation and learning over lunch, breaks or dinner.

The topic of telemedicine was one of the key topics of interest and since IPC was the only exhibitor with a telemedicine platform Kelli Stovall and Samantha Pomeroy were invited to participate as part of the panel for that breakout session. The discussion was lively and engaging leading to a detailed discussion of our iCare+ platform and another platform that an attendee is using. How it fits into the workflow and how pharmacies get paid for offering telemedicine were very important to the attendees and led to deep dives into how that works.

As one of the premier sponsors we were happy with the many detailed and impactful conversations we were able to have with attendees and, of course, it was great to connect with pharmacy owners I have known and served for years.

Thank you to Nicolette, the entire Atrium24 team, and the conference team for putting on an excellent conference. I look forward to working with you throughout the year and experiencing another great conference in February 2026.