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Pharmacy Analytics (Part 2) CVS Health SQL Interview Question
Pharmacy Analytics (Part 2)
CVS Health SQL Interview Question
CVS Health is analyzing its pharmacy sales data, and how well different products are selling in the market. Each drug is exclusively manufactured by a single manufacturer.
Write a query to identify the manufacturers associated with the drugs that resulted in losses for CVS Health and calculate the total amount of losses incurred.
Output the manufacturer's name, the number of drugs associated with losses, and the total losses in absolute value. Display the results sorted in descending order with the highest losses displayed at the top.
If you like this question, try out Pharmacy Analytics (Part 3)!
Table:
| Column Name | Type |
|---|---|
| product_id | integer |
| units_sold | integer |
| total_sales | decimal |
| cogs | decimal |
| manufacturer | varchar |
| drug | varchar |
Example Input:
| product_id | units_sold | total_sales | cogs | manufacturer | drug |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 156 | 89514 | 3130097.00 | 3427421.73 | Biogen | Acyclovir |
| 25 | 222331 | 2753546.00 | 2974975.36 | AbbVie | Lamivudine and Zidovudine |
| 50 | 90484 | 2521023.73 | 2742445.90 | Eli Lilly | Dermasorb TA Complete Kit |
| 98 | 110746 | 813188.82 | 140422.87 | Biogen | Medi-Chord |
Example Output:
| manufacturer | drug_count | total_loss |
|---|---|---|
| Biogen | 1 | 297324.73 |
| AbbVie | 1 | 221429.36 |
| Eli Lilly | 1 | 221422.17 |
Explanation:
The first three rows indicate that some drugs resulted in losses. Among these, Biogen had the highest losses, followed by AbbVie and Eli Lilly. However, the Medi-Chord drug manufactured by Biogen reported a profit and was excluded from the result.
The dataset you are querying against may have different input & output - this is just an example!
Solution
Step 1: Calculate total profit or loss for each manufacturer
To determine the total profit or loss for each manufacturer, we can use the formula:
Total Profit/(Total Loss) = Total Sales - Total Cost of Goods Sold
where a positive value indicates profit and a negative value indicates a loss. The query would look like this:
Showing the output for 4 randomly selected drugs:
| manufacturer | drug | net_value |
|---|---|---|
| Biogen | Acyclovir | -297324.73 |
| AbbVie | Lamivudine and Zidovudine | -221429.36 |
| Eli Lilly | Dermasorb TA Complete Kit | -221422.17 |
| Biogen | Medi-Chord | 672765.95 |
This query will provide a result with the column showing the calculated profit or loss for each drug.
Step 2: Filter for drugs making losses
To filter for drugs that are making losses, we can add a clause to keep rows where the is equal to or less than 0, indicating a loss:
This query will return only the rows where the drug is making a loss.
Step 3: Obtain count of unprofitable drugs and total losses for each manufacturer
Next, we can use aggregate functions to obtain the count of drugs associated with each manufacturer using and the total losses suffered by each manufacturer using :
Step 4: Convert total loss to absolute value and sort output
To convert the total losses to absolute value (i.e., remove the negative sign), we can use the function on the and order the results with the highest losses at the top:
Solution #2: Without ABS()
Alternatively, we can achieve the same result without using the function by switching the cogs and total_sales positions in the function and filtering for rows where in the clause: