My mood was as bright as the weather as I drove to the NPA Conference last month. Judging by the packed auditorium, I wasn’t the only one hoping for some positive outcomes from our industry leaders.

IPF founder Fin McCaul opened the conference with the three fundamental questions: why? how? what? The challenge for this years’ conference was to give independent pharmacists practical answers to these questions and Fin articulated several ideas I’ve been discussing with readers for some time now.

Unless independent pharmacy embraces change, we risk disappearing from the healthcare landscape. We need to develop into modern, forward-thinking practices using innovative technology to deliver added value to patients. Now is the time for us to speak with one clear voice to stakeholders and promote our value to local and national commissioners.

We need to develop into modern, forward-thinking practices using innovative technology to deliver added value

 Pharmacy Voice chair Claire Ward outlined the need for pharmacy to clearly communicate key messages to stakeholders. “We need to promote the value and attributes of the vast network of community pharmacy,” she said. With key professional categories AIMp, CCA and NPA now under one Pharmacy Voice umbrella, it is ideally placed to lobby as a united representative body for community pharmacy.

Greater representation

The NPA is looking to achieve greater representation for our independent sector. Its primary focus is helping independents to secure their core supply function, leading to a smoother operation of the pharmacy practice as a whole. Delegates were presented with many practical steps to manage their business and improve efficiency, but once this has been achieved, “independents need to focus on delivering value added clinical services to their patients,” said Mr McCaul. The question is, how?

Independent owners must now recognise the importance of staff training. From promoting medicines counter assistant training – there was much talk of protected learning time – to courses improving knowledge in various pharmacy categories, pharmacy owners need to invest in staff. They are vital in securing and protecting business. Professional development will create revenue from new clinical services and protect owners from the consequences of inadvertent errors and poor advice that so often result in negative press.

With numerous products and resources on display, I took the opportunity to identify some of the most useful new tools being showcased. EPS is undoubtedly the most important change to date in prescription processing and its implementation is clearly an area of concern. The impact will be huge when rollout is complete, yet independents still have to “get their heads around it” said NHS England Lead Pharmacist for EPS, Mohammed Hussain.

We urgently need to understand all the do’s and don’ts and there’s no shortage of training and education on the topic, including an excellent range of resources on the Health & Social Care Information Centre website. I would urge all readers to join the EPS community.

Check it out

The introduction of the Check34 software tool to help pharmacy owners extract meaningful data from FP34C statements is an interesting development that supports contractors in monitoring performance locally and nationally (see ICP May, p4). Developed by PSNC, this intuitive programme will help you monitor key performance indicators within your practice. Moreover, future upgrades will allow you to examine in detail the items that were processed by automatic scanner and how they were priced, including expensive items. This will prove to be of major benefit to us when reconciling prescription bundles.

We’re all familiar with the challenge of delivery drivers. None more so than Wales independent Gary Jones, who, frustrated by a lack of control of his work output, developed his own delivery app. Gary brought the house down with his hilarious recounting of the trials and tribulations of deliveries.

But on a serious note, the delivery tracker app, Pro Delivery Manager, is a live delivery tracker app that allows practice-based staff to access the status of the deliveries on the shop PMR machine. The application logs all deliveries and collects patients’ signatures, recording all the information electronically. This will allow pharmacies to cut right back on the volume of paper currently required.

The conference always provides a great forum to talk to colleagues and attend workshops and some have been instrumental in shifting my own thinking on how to improve business. One presentation in particular – looking at how to grow a business, secure its future by increasing traffic, converting new customers and retaining them – really stood out for me. I would suggest their slogan of ‘Make it clear, make it real, make it happen and make it last’ should apply to every independent pharmacy business.

We can be brilliant in delivering public health interventions, supporting patients with long-term conditions and providing increased domiciliary services. What we need as a profession is to become smarter at delivering our offering to our patients, but also speaking with one clear voice to stakeholders. We all need to promote the value of community pharmacy locally and nationally. But how we do it is up to you and me.