Is Your Pharmacy Layout Done with Your Customers' Best Interests in Mind?

As an independent pharmacist, you know that you can bring a personalized touch and stellar customer service to the table – qualities no retail pharmacy can hope to match.

Why is your pharmacy layout so important?

If you find your customers going to the competition despite your best efforts, it could be your store layout that is keeping them away. Why?

Your pharmacy layout can make it easy for customers to find what they need – or difficult

When you set up your store's layout, make sure that you:

• Place high-volume, seasonal, and sale items in several displays throughout the store

If a customer just wants to buy some aspirin, or wants to pick up some Halloween candy that is on sale, don't make that customer search for it. Instead, place high-volume, seasonal, and sale items in several displays throughout the store, and in their requisite departments.

• Clearly mark and make departments visible from a central location

Construct a counterclockwise, centralized footpath that meanders through your store; customers should be able to clearly see all departments from this footpath as they walk through the store.

Clearly mark all departments with highly visible signs that again can be clearly seen from this footpath, too.

Your pharmacy layout can make customers' shopping experience pleasant – or unpleasant

Your pharmacy layout should:

• Make it easy for customers to shop without feeling crowded

Customers should never be bumping into each other or squeezing through small spaces to shop. Instead, make the footpath wide enough for customers to easily pass each other from either direction without bumping into each other, and make department aisles wide enough that they are easily accessible.

• Provide strategic seating throughout the store for customers to sit and rest

While it would be a nice idea for every business to provide comfortable seating throughout the store so that customers can sit and take a break, it's especially important for the customers you serve. Many of your customers will be ill, elderly, and/or disabled, and it is imperative that they not be forced to stay on their feet when they can't. (If you can, provide a motorized scooter with shopping basket as well, so those same customers can shop with ease.)

Your pharmacy layout can keep your customers' personal health information safe – or make it accessible to unauthorized personnel

New HIPAA regulations established in September of 2013 now require you to keep patients' personal health information safe from unauthorized access. Any breach must be reported to the Department of Health and Human Services, not just those that pose a significant risk to the individuals affected, unless specifically allowed by the privacy rule.

Because of that, your pharmacy layout must now include:

• Strict controls and protocols that restrict personnel access to electronic hardware media that store patients' personal health information

Centralized workstations, policies that specify when workstations can be accessed, and authentication measures with every login are some examples of the new restrictions that should be put in place.

• Safeguards for electronic media, hardware and software that contain or are used to access PHI

Your pharmacy layout should now include specific location(s) so devices that are used to access PHI are securely kept, with specific protocols as to how these components can be moved, eliminated, or reused.

When you keep your customers' best interests in mind at all times, they will keep you in mind, too. Make sure you take care of their needs in every way, including with an optimized pharmacy layout, and you won't go wrong.