SHELF OBSESSED

Having an efficient pharmacy workflow can make the difference between profitability and non-profitability for your drugstore. It's no secret that the lion's share of an independent pharmacy's revenue is gained through the sale of prescription medications, and the more you can do to improve your pharmacy workflow, the more you should see your prescriptions revenue increase. In addition, more efficient operations will translate into increased customer satisfaction and lower stress levels for staff and customers alike. Improving your pharmacy workflow should:

When an efficient pharmacy workflow allows things to run smoothly in the back end of your drugstore, everyone benefits.

Customers are more satisfied because their orders are filled more quickly (and with fewer errors), and staff members are happier because they're able to work at their highest appropriate levels to provide the greatest value.

The pharmacist isn't busy performing tasks that could and should be done by lesser-certified technicians, and technicians aren't spending their time completing tasks that could just as well be performed by automated (robotic) equipment.

Finally, a freed-up pharmacist allows more time to spend face to face with patients dispensing advice and performing other important services, such as immunizations and blood pressure checks.

Creating a pharmacy workplace that promotes an efficient pharmacy workflow benefits everyone. For example:

• Customers are happier because prescription orders come out more quickly
• Technicians are more comfortable and able to do a better job, which improves their attitudes
• Pharmacists have more time to interact with patients and to spend time providing clinical services, such as taking blood pressure readings, administering inoculations and consulting with clients regarding their health conditions, medications, dosage requirements and potential drug interactions

When starting a pharmacy there are, what may seem like, endless details to handle. None, however, are more fundamental to having an effective, accurate back-end prescription-filling operation than your established workflow. Workflow, defined simply, is the process of a prescription order entering the pharmacy, being logged in, traveling through the filling and verification steps and finally landing in the hands of the ordering customer.

Every pharmacy has some type of established workflow—some more efficient than others and some adopted by default as "just the way we do things." A typical pharmacy workflow system will have four or five steps. The basic steps are usually:

• Input
• Fill
• Verification
• Check out

Whether you're having problems in the implementation of an efficient pharmacy workflow system or already have a fairly smooth running system but would like to further improve it, here are some ideas that may prove helpful. Maintaining an efficient pharmacy workflow provides numerous benefits, each of which directly or indirectly has a positive effect on what should be the number-one mission of your pharmacy: increased customer satisfaction.

The importance of having an efficient pharmacy workflow cannot be overstated and, although yours may be a long-established drug dispensing business in operation for years, it's improbable that there aren't improvements that could be made to increase both the efficiency and accuracy of your back-end processes.

Although the condition of your pharmacy workflow likely goes unnoticed by your customers, often hidden from view in the back end of the store, you can bet that the effects of the operations back there are apparent to customers and employees alike. When things are running efficiently back in the "employees only" area, everyone's happy and satisfied with the level of service being provided. When operations are bogged down, however, everyone suffers – and so does your store's bottom line.

Creating a more functional pharmacy workflow should be an ongoing goal of pharmacy owners, managers, and pharmacists, as these efforts will lead to improved productivity, efficiency, and accuracy. Simple steps like pinpointing inefficiencies such as redundant or unnecessary movements and excessive bending and reaching can make a big difference over the long hours of a working day. Saving time during the process of intake, filling, and putting out completed prescriptions not only makes for a happier client, but also a more satisfied staff. It also allows more opportunity for the pharmacist on duty to spend time counseling customers or just passing time visiting with them while they're waiting – all of which promotes better customer relations.

When you think about walking into the large, sterile-looking pharmacies run by the various big-box chain stores, the word "fun" doesn’t really come to mind – but then, creating fun times doesn’t seem to be one of the functional goals of those establishments. At their most basic level, typical pharmacies are designed to do three things:

• Efficiently and accurately fill prescriptions
• Provide quality care for patients
• Maintain a pharmacy workflow and store environment where clients are happy and employees have a high level of job satisfaction