Technology has revitalised our business

In the past 20 years, the population in the UK has increased by over 10 million — that’s a 17 per cent rise. However, from 2009 to 2019, the total number of GPs at any one time increased by just 100, equivalent to a mere 0.002 per cent uplift. It doesn’t take a statistician to calculate that the numbers don’t add up. 

As our population increases exponentially to the number of GPs available to local communities, more patients are unable to secure an appointment and so head to their local pharmacy or A&E instead. This causes the long waiting times which have made for alarming media headlines and, more importantly, wholly unsatisfactory care provision.

The current contract in England has led to a reduction in income from dispensing, with pharmacy remuneration now intrinsically linked to the provision of services. This can include vaccinations, PCR testing, online consultation provision, phlebotomy services, medicines reviews and contraceptive advice, amongst lots of others. 

Exactly how we as pharmacists are supposed to run a profitable business and tap into these extra revenue streams, when we are overburdened and under-resourced trying to deliver the ever-increasing prescription demand for patients? Whether you are an inner-city pharmacy such as mine, or a rural business, each pharmacy has its own set of distinct challenges to overcome.

Vulnerability

Covid-19 exposed a vulnerability in how modern community pharmacy works right now, with workforce pressures meaning that when staff are off sick or absent with family commitments, a pharmacy owner is often required to step in and cover – resulting in long working hours. Many pharmacists were working into the night during the pandemic, just trying to fulfil medication requests from their patients. In 2022, pharmacy teams are still feeling the fallout of Covid, both in terms of workforce capacity and staff morale.

The only way to cope with this increase in prescription demand is to harness the latest technology. As I’ve since discovered, there is no ‘one size fits all’ with technology adoption and solutions – what works for one pharmacy isn’t necessarily going to work for another even if they are located close to each other.   

Decisions need to be based on patient demographics, demand, the geography of a pharmacy and future opportunities for growth. 

My wife and I have had a successful business for many years, running four pharmacies in Streatham, south west London. Westbury Chemist, our flagship pharmacy, is open 365 days a year, 9am to midnight, serving the local community. The pharmacy has big dispensing demands and the dispensary was quite chaotic and disorganised before we decided to partner with Omnicell. 

Staff were busy, stressed and unable to find the time to talk to patients. We felt we were delivering a poor service as we could see waiting times were increasing on the shop floor. Additionally, because we were overstretched, we were unable to tap into extra revenue via the provision of NHS and private clinical services such as ear waxing, smoking cessation and weight loss management. 

Crossroads

We had come to a crossroads. We could either outsource, do nothing and thereby place a cap on volume, add more dispensary shelf space or, my final option, to automate. We decided to invest in automation. 

We reached our decision by setting three core objectives:

• To increase efficiency 
• To increase capacity 
• To free up pharmacist time to focus on clinical services.

I’m the first to admit that this wasn’t straight- forward and, initially, the adoption process did present a number of hurdles for us to overcome – not least in having to clear out and reorganise the pharmacy, which was no mean feat. Initially we installed a VBM MDS packing robot to fill, seal and accuracy check our MDS trays. 

Once this had been successfully installed and bedded in with our staff, we then invested in an RDS original pack dispensing robot, which automates the storing, management and dispensing of medication packs. Now Westbury is a thriving pharmacy, clinic and vaccination centre – our employees are happier and I’m certainly a much happier business owner!