Community pharmacy needed to receive more official recognition from the National Health Service for the work it did, Mr JOHN D'ARCY (director, National Pharmaceutical Association) said during the panel discussion. There was a perception that pharmacy was not part of the managed system of the NHS. This needed to be tackled as a matter of urgency, he said.
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THE PANEL (left to right): Michael Major, John D'Arcy and Michael Ward |
"Not enough prescribing advice is being provided by community pharmacists because there is too much self-doubt. Pharmacists know much more than they realise and they can talk to GPs."
On the subject of primary care groups and trusts, Mr D'ARCY said that pharmacists had to start getting involved. PCTs would be equivalent to small companies with budgets of around £60m. They would want to make changes, which could affect pharmacy. The profession had to explain the benefits of the current infrastructure and pharmacy network, namely, accessibility for patients, the knowledge and experience of pharmacists and the large number of consumers visiting pharmacies.
Mr MICHAEL WARD (GEHE[UK]) said that the profession had to present a united face in its discussions with PCTs: "If we continue with the attitude of ‘multiple bad, independent good' then we are doomed."
Mr MICHAEL MAJOR (former managing director, Lloyds Pharmacy) said that, from attending PCG meetings, he felt that they had a good appreciation of what pharmacy did at present, but no appreciation of what it could do in the future. Pharmacists had it in their power to change this.
Asked about the effects of e-commerce on pharmacy, Mr MAJOR said that he did not think that business-to-consumer (B2C) internet pharmacy would work in the United Kingdom in the near future, but business-to-business (B2B) pharmacy sites would become established in the next 12 months and he predicted that they would change the way in which many things were done in pharmacy.
Asked to identify the challenges facing Nucare as an organisation, Mr MAJOR said that the biggest problem was ensuring members' compliance with the organisation's programmes and promotions. "What do you do about non-compliant members?"
However, he said that he was not aware of any organisation which combined both operational efficiency (in terms of layout, promotions and merchandising) and customer intimacy. Franchising might be one way to address this.
There had been pharmacy activity on the internet for as long as it had been a medium for commerce, Mr TONY DE NICOLA (director, A&D Associates) said in a conference workshop. However, internet pharmacy in the United States had really kicked off at the beginning of 1999 when four "pure play" or internet-only B2C pharmacy sites had launched. In order to maintain a competitive market position, all of the major pharmacy chains had established sites and wholesalers had established sites for their own symbol groups and for independent pharmacies. Some stand-alone independent pharmacy sites had also been set up.
"Internet pharmacy is here to stay but it will not be the be-all-and-end-all of pharmacy. It will not stop customers visiting pharmacies."
The big question, which had not yet been answered, was how to make money out of internet pharmacy. No one had developed a unique selling point for an individual service but everyone wanted to be on the internet. "I call this the lemming theory," he said. Three routes had been taken to making money. These were postage charges, advertising and gross margin. However, profits on postage had been eroded by competition, advertising revenues were now in doubt and margins for internet pharmacy were low by definition. Mr De Nicola demonstrated several of the internet sites, pointing out that they all worked in a similar way. At present, there was "not much buying but a lot of looking" on the sites, he said.
His advice to Nucare members was that they should have their own websites (and promote them) as a marketing tool. Financial benefits would be hard to measure, but pharmacists should not wait too long.
Symbol or banner groups were well established in Canada, Mr MARTIN BELITZ (formerly vice-president for pharmacy and regulatory affairs, Shoppers Drug Mart) told the conference.
Shoppers Drug Mart had been founded 35 years ago as a franchise operation. It now had 830 pharmacies (about 12 per cent of the total) with a turnover of C$4bn (£1.8bn). It had positioned itself as a "community health care resource centre" and had a number of best-selling own-label brands.
There was a critical shortage of pharmacists in both Canada and the United States, Mr Belitz said. There was recruitment going on across the border and from the UK.
"Many independent pharmacy owners in Canada are succeeding because they are driving change in their own environment," he said. Pharmacists had to look at health, not health care, in order to succeed.
Mr Belitz was critical of what he had seen of independent community pharmacy in the UK: "I have seen some pharmacies where I would not want my prescriptions to be filled. They were dark, cramped and dirty."
Mr MAX GÄCHTER (president, Top Pharm AG) described the company's strict franchise operation, which currently has 64 members in German-speaking Switzerland.
In return for annual fees of between SFr16,000 and SFr23,000 (£6,500-£13,000), members received promotional materials, magazines, and guidance on interior design and layout for their pharmacies. All the promotional campaigns were mandatory and were assessed by "phantom in the pharmacy" mystery shopper visits. The organisation was a partner in the Wellshop site for e-commerce (www.wellshop.ch, see PJ, May 27, p820).