The Community Pharmacies Delivering More Clinical Services, Not Less

It was announced earlier this week that many pharmacies had been forced to stop providing NHS and public health services due to increasing financial and operational pressures. But despite spiralling costs within the sector and an expired pharmacy contract that is not fit for purpose, there are some pharmacies who are bucking the trend and providing more services than they have done previously. Our Head of Marketing, Shelley Dyer, looks at what they have done differently.

Community Pharmacy England said earlier this week that thousands of pharmacies had “been left with no choice but to reduce the services they can offer”. The negotiator’s poll of pharmacy owners, representing more than 2,1000 pharmacies across England, found the majority (96%) had stopped delivering locally commissioned services over the past 12 months. In addition, almost a third (30%) said they had stopped the provision of advanced services due to a lack of time and resource.

News of the poll came hot on the heels of the decision to reduce the minimum threshold of Pharmacy First consultations this month from 20 to 15. This was amid concerns that one in five community pharmacies participating in Pharmacy First in England failed to meet the minimum threshold of five consultations in April.

Community Pharmacy England has cited a 30% real terms funding reduction and spriralling costs as the crux of the issue. There is no doubt that a lack of suitable funding is having a significant impact on pharmacies ability to deliver everything that is now expected of them. However inadequate funding is only part of the puzzle. Even with a fairer funding deal, community pharmacy will need to look at the way they currently work if they want to deliver the increasing number of services that are expected of them. The pharmacy dispensing process takes up 88% of a pharmacist’s time in store on average, this leaves no time for service provision. Trying to deliver services while still dispensing in store is setting community pharmacy up to fail. The only option is to streamline the dispensing process and move as much dispensing as possible offsite to a dispensing hub.

A number of pharmacies have already taken that step and as a result they are now delivering an increasing number of services across their branches.

Pearl Chemist Group

An article in Chemist and Druggist this week described Pearl Chemist Group’s hub facility as “the jewel in Pearl Chemist’s crown.” Around 60-70% of the dispensing work is now resolved at the hub so that Pearl’s pharmacists are “actually able to concentrate on the patient”. Since the fast-growing group in South West London and Surrey moved to a hub and spoke model it has focused on embedding services in all its branches. Owner and superintendent Mike Patel says it can be six to 12 months before a pharmacy will start to see a financial gain from services but, having been on the journey, the group is now in a position where it provides a range of established services that are profitable. The group is also in a position to introduce new and additional services that bring in additional revenue.

Learn more about Pearl Chemist Group’s hub and spoke journey.

Lo’s Pharmacy

Lo’s Pharmacy group went live with their hub and spoke solution for its 39 branches, predominantly in Yorkshire, just over a year ago. Since then they have freed up an average of four hours per day for their pharmacists working in both large and small branches. Brothers and owners, Chris and Jonathan Lo, say that the hub is “a crucial resource to help their pharmacies cope with an ever-increasing workload with services like Pharmacy First taking centre stage.” The hub and spoke model also means a quicker turnaround time for patient’s medication as the hub offers a next day turnaround service for all orders sent before 1pm.

Learn more about Lo’s Pharmacy’s hub and spoke journey.

AR Pharmacy

In Southampton, AR Pharmacy has been using a FLOWRx hub solution to fulfill its repeat original pack prescriptions, given the stores incredibly high volumes of over 45,000 items. It has allowed the store to significantly increase the number of services it delivers. The pharmacy is one of the highest performing pharmacies in the country when it comes to New Medicines Services and it was already doing a large number of NHS services. For AR the biggest increase has been the number of private services it can deliver. It has been able to move into areas like aesthetics, minor surgical procedures, blood testing, hormone replacement therapy and travel clinics.

Having the right infrastructure in place means that AR has also been able to grow the footprint of the business and it is now a four-store group.

Learn more about AR Pharmacy’s hub and spoke journey.

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