SHELF OBSESSED

We’ve spoken plenty in this space about the myriad challenges faced by pharmacists. One that we haven’t covered yet is as ironic as it is vexing: the point at which all of your work and sweat equity finally positions you for expansion, only to hit a wall — whether a literal one imposed by your existing space, or a metaphorical one in the form of local building codes and other restrictions on pharmacies — that limits your options and elbow room alike. There’s a solution: careful pharmacy design that maximizes your space.

There’s something satisfying about a good pharmacy design rounded out by well-installed pharmacy shelving. The team at Shelving Design Systems takes pride in our work, and our customers love the results. However, neither our work nor yours are done once the last of the sawdust is vacuumed and the last jar of ointment is placed on the shelves. Your shelving should evolve so your business can, too. That means regular shelving updates.

Even though the medical and legal landscape is changing with astonishing speed, there are still plenty of challenges for cannabis dispensaries. With our decades’ worth of combined experience in pharmacy design, retail consulting, workflow, and shelving installation, Shelving Design Systems has plenty of insight to offer. Today, let’s take a look at the front end of your dispensary.

A growing body of medical research has found that cannabis has a wide range of medical applications, helping patients deal with the side effects of cancer treatment to the ravages of Parkinson’s Disease. Society at large is beginning to come around. As it does, citizens are slowly but inexorably bringing state legislatures along with them, thirty three of fifty states and DC have legalized medical cannabis and momentum is building elsewhere as well. What are some of the back-of-shop storage considerations for dispensaries?

According to the NIH, prescription errors are a relative rarity. However, when they do occur, they often have grave consequences. Patients can experience severe side effects, medication injuries, and even death when the wrong medication is dispensed, the dosage is wrong, or if the label contains errors. Even in the best-case scenario — the pharmacist or patient catches the mistake before the medication is taken — those errors erode trust and can even expose your pharmacy to lawsuits. As the above-cited NIH study states, error prevention matters “because pharmacies dispense such high volumes of medications that even a low error rate can translate into a large number of errors.”

So how can your pharmacy protect itself and its patients?

Pharmacy practice can be frustrating and rewarding in equal measure. It can be challenging keeping the spark of idealism that got you into the field alive, especially when your ideals collide head-on with the realities of low margins, high competition, and ever-shifting expectations. So how do you keep your pharmacy competitive without compromising either your ideals or your bottom line?

Not once in our many years of business has the Shelving Design Systems team met a pharmacist who wished they had more paperwork to deal with. If the reams of records, documents, receipts, invoices, and other files a pharmacy needs to handle and retain threaten to swamp you in paper, it’s time to find an alternative. Namely, it’s time to explore an electronic document management solution.

For a segment that didn’t exist a decade ago, the Internet of Things (IoT) is assuming outsized importance across several industries. The IoT is already causing seismic changes in pharmaceutical manufacturing, but because of a combination of regulatory and market forces, retail pharmacies are on the front lines of this shift, and are actually outpacing the manufacturing side of the industry. Shelving Design Systems is seeing a major impact among our pharmacy shelving clients in recent years, so this week we’re taking a closer look at why, and what it means for you.

The pharmacy design services offered by Shelving Design Systems are a bit art, a bit science, and just a dash of Nostradamus. We find ourselves learning from past designs, true, but we also spend a lot of time looking ahead to the kinds of trends shaping pharmacy design. After all, nobody wants a design that will be dated no sooner than the last shelf is installed or the last screw turned. So what, and for whom, will we be designing in 2019?

Through our many years helping pharmacies in the Southeast with their shelving needs, we’ve learned two things at Shelving Design Systems: first, that pharmacies have many of the same pain points in common, and second, that even though pharmacy solutions to many of those issues can feel frustratingly out of reach, there are some small but significant steps we can take to wrest back some control.