Relatively simple changes to your decor, layout, and lighting can mean the difference between driving customers away – or inviting them in. When you focus on structuring your pharmacy for success, you make it a pleasing place to visit – and to come back to.
How do you structure your pharmacy for success?
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Modernize with new pharmacy shelving and fixtures
This will modernize your look and will also make it easier to change your pharmacy layout as need be to serve your customers.
Today's pharmacy shelving and fixtures come in a variety of materials and styles and are also much easier to set up and break down so that you can change your layout whenever you wish.
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Update your look
New wallpaper or fresh paint, new floor coverings like carpeting or wood, and new lighting fixtures can make your interior much more inviting to your customers.
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Focus on lighting design
Update lighting fixtures and swap out old fluorescent lights for softer full-spectrum fluorescent lighting. It's easier on the eyes and doesn't have the irritating audible "buzz" usually present with standard fluorescent lighting. This fosters a relaxing atmosphere that is conducive to customers' pleasant shopping experience.
Use focal lighting to enhance your displays, too; you'll automatically draw customers' attention to merchandise.
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Optimize your store layout
Set up your store's layout so that there's a main foot traffic path that customers will follow and can automatically see all you have to offer, but still easily break away from easily to browse in individual departments.
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Place displays of high-volume, sale or seasonal items strategically throughout the store
House merchandise in their respective departments on pharmacy shelving so that customers can find it easily, and then place duplicates of seasonal, high-volume, and/or sale items in highly visible displays throughout the store. Place displays at the entrance to the store and in highly visible tabletop or endcap displays near the products' respective departments and at checkout lines.
Don't forget about new HIPAA regulations
As of September 23, 2013, one of the things you'll need to do to structure your pharmacy for success is incorporate new HIPAA regulations that took effect on that date. Specifically, you must protect your patients' personal health information (PHI) from unauthorized access in the following ways:
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For privacy
Now, individuals can control who sees their PHI and must have full access to their own information. Professionals in healthcare who need information to take care of specific patients or for other legitimate reasons can still access it.
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For security breaches
No longer must you give the Department Of Health And Human Services notice of a security breach only if that breach poses a significant risk to affected individuals. Instead, you must disclose ANY PHI breach unless permitted by the privacy rule. Any subcontractors or business associates will need to sign agreements that will be updated regularly, and must in compliance with the HIPAA security rule.
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For physical safeguards
You must restrict who can access the electronic media or hardware that stores patient PHI. To do this, you may centralize workstations so that unauthorized physical access, tampering or theft are thwarted, and you must implement policies that detail when workstations may be accessed. Require the appropriate authentication measures with every login, and detail when any hardware, electronic media, or other components that are used to access PHI can be reused, eliminated, or moved.
It's a relatively simple matter to structure your pharmacy for success when you know what to do. Implementing these relatively simple changes can boost your profits, and will help ensure that you serve your customers more effectively at the same time.
