PharmaTools offers suggestions for improving pharmacy efficiency
PharmaTools, like any smart business, knows that regardless of the business type, inefficiency should be avoided. But, more specifically, they know that community pharmacies face significant competitive pressure, and narrow margins. As a result, any operational inefficiency can substantially jeopardize profitability and, more importantly, viability.
Consider these three suggestions that you can implement to prompt productivity, increase efficiency and help your pharmacy run like a well-oiled machine:
1. Measure everything – Without measurements, community pharmacies can’t tell how their performance compares to industry standards, is better or worse than that of their competitors. How can you track your progress to see if your efforts at improving efficiency are paying off? Using software programs specifically designed for pharmacies can give you the ability to track the number of scripts your employees dispense hourly. If tracking determines that you have employees that are much more efficient than others, you can focus on the less productive employees and work with them to raise their productivity.
2. Assess the actual workflow – Take a look, literally, at how fast the scripts move through the pharmacist’s bench. Do your techs have everything they need close at hand to fill each script? Inefficient physical layouts where your technicians are running around from wall to wall to pick up a counter, a vial or anything else can dramatically decrease output. Reducing footsteps is the first step to helping your techs in filling scripts more efficiently.
3. Synchronize – Every pharmacy has patients with chronic conditions that result in their taking multiple medications every month. By synchronizing their medications so that they are filled in a single monthly trip, you are not only saving your customers multiple visits to your pharmacy but it’s far more efficient for you to fill their scripts all at once. If you can control demand, by synchronizing medications you can control your staffing requirements in advance. If 25 of your med-synced customers use the middle of the month for their refills then you can be fully staffed for that time but reduce your labor costs for other times of the month where you already know the customer demand will be much lighter.
PharmaTools hopes that these time-saving recommendations will help to make your pharmacy more successful and more profitable. If you would like to see what other cost-saving and time-saving products PharmaTools can offer your pharmacy, please visit us at https://pharmatools.com or call us at 815-317-6619 for more information.
