5 ways to improve the efficiency of your pharmacy

Major funding cuts have hit community pharmacies in recent years. The Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee (PSNC) is deeply concerned about chronic underfunding in the sector, particularly now many pharmacies have lost income through the winding down of COVID-19 services. As a result, many community pharmacies are now assessing ways of improving their efficiency. Key targets include lowering operating costs, improving customer service and retention, reducing wastage and increasing the bottom line through new income streams.

If you want to improve your pharmacy’s efficiency, it can be difficult to know where to start. To help you get started, this blog shares our top five ways to improve the efficiency of your pharmacy.

Conduct an efficiency audit

If you want to improve the efficiency of your pharmacy, it’s a good idea to start with an audit of your services, processes, and workflows. Get staff involved in the process and ask them whether they’re experiencing any problems in delivering services, where they are having to rely on manual or repetitive processes, or whether they have identified any other issues. This can help you prioritise the areas which offer the greatest efficiencies.

Every pharmacy is different, but questions you could ask while conducting an efficiency audit include:

• Are there services that are generating unexpectedly high levels of customer complaints? What is driving these complaints? How can this be solved?
• How are new and existing services performing? Is customer take-up at expected levels? Are there barriers to customer access?
• Are there any ongoing stock and inventory management issues? What’s causing them?
• Is the current PMR software fit for purpose? Does it have the functionality you need now and for delivering services in the future?
• How effective is the pharmacy’s hardware? Does any of it need upgrading (such as POS systems, touch-screen devices or advertising screens)?
• Is staff attendance at expected levels, is sickness leave higher than normal or are people working long hours? 
  
  

Once you’ve  identified specific inefficiencies, you can seek a solution. To help measure impact, it’s a good idea to set targets and KPIs. For example, you may want to set targets for quarterly sales, the reduction of ‘dead’ stock, employee attendance or other metrics. Revisit these frequently to check you’re making the progress you intended.

Take control of your inventory

As every pharmacist knows, inventory is your biggest ongoing cost. Unless you have complete real-time visibility of your stock, you’ll encounter many inefficiencies. For example, if you don’t know which items are selling quickly, you run the risk of over or under stocking them – losing you money. If you’re not alerted when customers fail to pick up a repeat prescription, those items could end up in ‘dead’ stock before you have a chance to return them to inventory. Similarly, without being able to see stock levels at a glance when fulfilling prescriptions you won’t be able to take appropriate action and you will be repeatedly left with owings. Also, unless your inventory is integrated with your POS systems, price increases may not be immediately reflected at the till. 

Better inventory management is one of the key ways in which pharmacies can find  efficiencies, save significant amounts of money and improve both time management and customer service. 

You can learn more about making efficiencies in this area by reading our post, Why is inventory management important in pharmacies?

Optimise the layout of your pharmacy

As pharmacies evolve, so do their layouts. But have you ever stopped to think how changing the layout of your pharmacy can lead to more productive use of staff time and increased sales? 

A good place to start is to analyse what happens when a pharmacist dispenses a prescription. Do they have all the tools they need close at hand? How far do they need to move around the pharmacy to fulfil a prescription? Is there a way of bringing the work closer to the pharmacist, cutting down on motion and increasing productivity?

It’s also worth asking whether it’s possible to alter your pharmacy’s layout to maximise selling space. The more OTC products customers are able to see, the more likely you are to make additional sales. Also, creating more room for POS collateral and smart advertising screens can also drive extra purchases. 

Finally, many pharmacies have found that relocating their PMR system to the counter or using mobile devices to access it can bring significant benefits. Many pharmacists enjoy working in closer contact with patients, giving them greater job satisfaction. In addition, patients appreciate being able to benefit from face-to-face advice with a pharmacist, which could in turn attract more customers.

Automate processes where possible

Today, modern PMR systems – along with other software and hardware – can automate a lot of repeated daily pharmacy processes, saving you both time and money.

The key is to make sure that your systems have the functionality you need for the efficient delivery of all of your services. Some options available to you include:

• Automated CPCS notifications. If you offer the Community Pharmacist Consultation Service, advanced PMR systems will automatically notify you of a patient referral and give you a certain timeframe in which to action it. This helps reduce the likelihood of the patient coming into the pharmacy without you realising they are a referral – and missing out on the CPCS payment.
• Pharmacy robots. While expensive, dispensing robots deliver efficiencies that save you time from the outset and money over the long term. By automating the dispensing process to this degree, you increase capacity and free up pharmacist and staff time, allowing them to deliver other services more efficiently.
• Automated dispensing processes. Even if pharmacy robots are currently out of your price range, the right PMR software can bring an efficient degree of automation to your dispensing procedures. For example, some platforms allow you to conduct instant clinical checks, as well as offering features such as Summary Care Record Integration and Real Time Exemption Checking.  

In addition, there may be new opportunities ahead for smaller pharmacies to take advantage of ‘hub and spoke’ dispensing. A recent government consultation proposed that pharmacies be allowed to outsource ‘hub’ dispensing to third-party pharmacies. If these proposals go ahead, it could speed up dispensing in smaller ‘spoke’ pharmacies and allow them to use the time saved to deliver a wider range of services.   

Encourage staff buy-in

Making your pharmacy more efficient often means introducing significant changes. Whether these involve changes in procedures or protocols, or even the introduction of a new PMR system, it’s important to encourage staff buy-in at every stage of the process.

There are many ways you can do this, but being open about your goals is essential. If staff understand and support what you want to achieve, they are more likely to help make the journey a collaborative effort. Make sure that staff can give feedback as you introduce new efficiencies and that you take their concerns on board. Above all, if you are implementing new hardware or software systems, ensure colleagues get adequate training. Even the best pharmacy technology will only deliver the results you need if staff understand how to get the best from it. 

Next steps

Every pharmacy faces different challenges, but there are plenty of inventive ways to identify and achieve efficiencies. Before you go down the route of wholesale change, it’s important to audit your current processes and workflows. This allows you to introduce efficiencies that solve immediate problems and issues in order of priority and impact. After this, it’s time to think creatively – even to the extent of reconfiguring the layout of your pharmacy and retail area. However, perhaps the richest seam of efficiencies can be gained by upgrading your hardware and software ems. From streamlining your inventory through to automated dispensing and properly capturing different income streams, relatively modest investment can go a long way.