How Pharmacy Business can deal with Coronavirus Pandemic
As medicine is every individual’s basic need, pharmacy is the only business to run full-time in this COVID-19 crisis. Alongside doctors and officials, they play a very important role in fighting this pandemic. There are many challenges facing pharmacies during this time, in order to run their business smoothly and ensure their health. As a pharmacy owner, there will be a lot of questions coming up on your mind to resolve every obstacle. Here are few I can help you with:
1 What are the measures that Pharmacy business owners need to take to fight COVID-19
Pharmacies, as a crucial part of the healthcare system, play a significant role in supplying the public with medications, therapeutics, vaccines, and basic health services. It’s necessary to ensure continuous pharmacy operation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pharmacy staff can reduce their risk of exposure to the virus causing COVID-19 during the pandemic and reduce the risk to consumers by following the principles of infection prevention and control as well as social distancing.
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Advise sick employees to stay home
Make sure pharmacy staff with fever or respiratory symptoms remain home and away from the office until they recover. Ensure that policies on sick leave are flexible, non-punitive, and compatible with guidelines on public health and that workers are aware of and appreciate those policies.
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Filling prescriptions
While the actual process of preparing medicines for dispensing is not a direct patient care operation, other components of the dispensing medication such as prescription intake, patient therapy, or patient education that expose pharmacy personnel to individuals who may have respiratory disease. As well as following guidelines in the workplace, pharmacy workers should:
1. Provide customer-friendly hand sanitizer on counters and provide adequate and convenient access to the soap and water or hand sanitizer.
2. Encourage all prescribers to issue orders by phone or electronically. The pharmacy will implement policies in compliance with relevant state laws, rules, or executive orders to avoid handling paper prescriptions.
3. The filling and supplying of prescriptions do not require PPE use. Once a prescription has been filled, the packed drug may be put on a counter for collection by the patient, instead of being distributed directly to the consumer. -
Using techniques to reduce close interaction between employees and clients and between clients:
1 Minimize physical consumer interaction and inter customer touch. Keep social distance (6 feet between individuals) as far as possible for people entering the pharmacy. Using signage/barriers and floor markers to warn waiting for customers from the register, other customer portals, and other customers and pharmacy personnel to stand 6 feet back.
2 Place a portion of clear plastic in the consumer contact area to provide barrier protection (e.g. Plexiglas type material or clear plastic sheet) to shield against droplets from coughs or sneezes. Configure the people at the bottom of the barrier with a pass-through opening to talk through or exchange objects, if possible.
3 Both customer service counters and touch areas are regularly washed and disinfected. Clean and disinfect regularly used objects and surfaces like workstations, keyboards, telephones, and door buttons.
4 Avoid the use of newspapers and other common products in waiting areas of pharmacies. Ensure there is daily cleaning of the waiting room.
5 For pharmacies with a co-located retail pharmacy, using signage to remind clients who have respiratory problems to wait in a different section of the store for their appointment.
6 Promote the use of self-serve checkout registers and clean them frequently. Have hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes at register locations for use by customers.
7 Promote social distancing by diverting as many clients as possible to drive through gates, pick-up curbside, or home delivery, where feasible.
8 Reduce the number of pharmacy customers at any given time to prevent crowding in the pharmacy counter or checkout areas.
9 Pharmacists who are providing patients with chronic disease management services, medication management services, and other services that do not require face-to-face encounters should make every effort to use a telephone, telehealth, or tele-pharmacy strategies.
10 Close self-serve blood pressure units.
Connect to the Best Pharmacy Billing & Inventory Software
2 How to manage sufficient stock of essential medicines during the lockdown
With rising panic, stockpiling among people is increasing, whether it be grocery stores or medicines. Although some of the distributors do not work, most of them are busy supplying retailers with the required medicines. Now, find the right distributors that don’t leave your radar. If you are still facing a shortage of drugs make sure that you do not supply consumers with medication for more than 30 days unless it is really important. Even over branded medicines you can promote generic medicines and make them understand how much they can save on it.
When you have stored up, you can inform your customers of availability, or you can give a few days before they run out of stock to chronic patients. It helps you to develop a positive relationship with your clients, which is the main growth feature of the pharmaceutical industry.
Make sure that you use the zero stock / minimum stock alerts in your POS, which will inform you on which stock is running out and you can reorder based on the same. And don’t forget to bear in mind your medications’ shelf-life when you stock up, because you may end up losing too much if you stock up excessively.
3 How to reduce walkins and not lose out on my profits at the same time?
It is very simple
i. Make your pharmacy available online, so consumers can place orders by checking what’s in your inventory available. There are several ways to do, one way is by building an online web site for your shop and the other is by actually launching an app in the play store/app store related to your pharmacy. This will significantly help people test generic variations, labels, and place their own orders. Apart from the order details, consumers can also request medications for confirmation of medical advice.
ii. Continue delivering orders in the doorsteps of your customers. Today we might see customers being unfairly prevented from going outside and deadline restrictions are being imposed on in-store transactions. Since everybody is smart enough to get out of wherever they have to be, providing home delivery will help reduce the risk of contamination. It would also reduce the workload in the store for the employees, during those restricted hours.
4. How to overcome the shortage of manpower?
The lack of manpower is yet another problem that most pharmacies across India face. With the right delivery management software and online order taking platform, you can handle an incredible amount of orders with limited staff and limited skills ensuring minimal communication.
However, in our research, it has been found that there is one person in every mid-level pharmacy who works for himself full time on purchase entry with a separate program. With the purchase import feature in POS, you can import all your purchase invoices directly with a single click which will save more than 80 percent of your time compared to the manual purchase entry function.
Why Pharmacy Business stays to be very essential during COVID-19?
Community pharmacies are an important primary healthcare provider and are frequently the first point of contact for COVID-19-related information and recommendations, as well as continuous delivery of medications for people with chronic conditions.
Responsibilities and role of community pharmacy
During this pandemic, community pharmacies have the responsibility of:
• Storage and supply of appropriate stocks of medicines, devices, masks, etc.
• Informing and educating the public
• Counselling
• Triaging and referring patients
• Promoting disease prevention
• Promoting infection control
Ensuring the continuity of these services is critical.
Every pharmacy owner should have a business continuity plan outlining how their pharmacy will continue
to operate during an unplanned service disruption.
To complement any business continuity plan, the Guild has also developed a Pandemic Planning
template to assist pharmacists in preparing for unplanned contingencies associated with a pandemic such
as COVID-19.
Why are these so important?
“The greater the responsibility comes with greater strength” It’s being said the true power can only be checked at times like this. Start to act today and ensure that you break the spread and contribute to the greater good of your locality.
