SHELF OBSESSED

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?

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.

Running a pharmacy can feel like being on a small boat in a storm. You’re buffeted on all sides by competition, high overheads, inventory challenges, regulatory pressures, and fickle consumer tastes. It’s easy to look for a silver bullet or quick fix — a big, bold solution to your problems — but all of us at Shelving Design Systems have found over the years that taking care of the fundamentals is what really ensures long-term viability and profitability. One of those fundamentals that’s capable of forming a solid foundation for many of the others? Efficiency.

Whether you’re a retail pharmacy embarking on a full remodel or a compounding pharmacy seeking to improve workflow, you’re likely looking for the simplest and most cost-effective way to get the job done. It’s not uncommon for businesses to reach out to multiple contractors for a single job, but this can have its drawbacks. Why should you consider a full-service pharmacy shelving company like Shelving Design Systems instead?

Whether you’re renovating an existing space or building a new pharmacy from the ground up, you’ve got some decisions to make. Those choices encompass more than appearances and aisle width. Your shelving design can be a make-or-break part of your business, but when it’s planned properly, it’s more than capable of pulling its own weight. So what do you need to consider as you choose your pharmacy shelving?

Your pharmacy shelving actually has the capability to make or break your business as an independent drugstore because it's responsible for creating a major part of your overall merchandising environment. While it's the prescription dispensing function that brings most customers to you and produces the greatest percentage of your store's revenues, it's the front-end merchandising area that shoppers have to walk through to get to the prescription counter located near the rear of the store. If shoppers are put off by what they see, it will negatively affect their “buying mood” and may even convince them that they just might want to purchase their prescriptions elsewhere.

Pharmacy shelving, often overlooked for its importance in creating the basic working environment within your drug store, plays a different and unique role in both the front and back ends of your business space. Pharmacies, by their very nature, have unique shelving and fixture requirements that differ depending on where in the store they're installed. Back end pharmacy shelving needs to be concerned with easy access for workers to reach essential supplies to promote an efficient workflow. It also must provide needed security, prodigious storage space and, in some areas, a sterile space for compounding medications.

Privacy requirements governing the use of PHI (protected health information) have become extremely stringent, especially since the 2013 Final Omnibus Rule Update to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). The rules regarding the security and privacy of health information and data are not only now being much more tightly enforced, but penalties for breaching these standards are significant, carrying fines of up to 1.5 million dollars.

The retail pharmacy industry is undergoing a significant transition, and independent pharmacy owners who are able to adapt to the rapidly changing trends will find themselves positioned well to profit from some newly created circumstances.

It's been 50 years since the Medicare program was enacted, and since its inception, millions have signed on to this federal insurance program. At last count more than 55 million Americans were currently receiving benefits from the program. Medicare Part D, which went into effect in January 2006, is a prescription drug plan that, according to The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2015 Budget in Brief, has more than 40 million participants enrolled, most of whom are seniors, aged 65 and older. It's estimated that seniors fill nearly 30 prescriptions per year at retail pharmacies, compared to only about half that number being filled by individuals between the ages of 19 and 64.

Looks are important in the world of retail pharmacy. The quality of your customer service and the competitiveness of your prices won't matter if your drugstore has only minimal customer traffic or if those would-be shoppers who do come in leave empty handed or buy little and then don't return again.