Good habits for conquering and avoiding paperwork mountains

Somewhere, in most dispensaries, sits a pile of papers. This typically contains a few invoices, a delivery note or two, correspondence from the primary care organisation, various memos, marketing material left by a rep, the odd MHRA or NHS alert, copies of The Pharmaceutical Journal and other pharmacy publications and, perhaps, a letter from a student enquiring about a summer job or a request from a local charity.

Community pharmacies not only accumulate paperwork generated from running a business (eg, health and safety records, bills and maintenance contracts) but there are invoices to send to local surgeries, standard operating procedures to review, PCO audits to be conducted, MUR forms to post, interventions to be recorded, and applications for relocations to be opposed — not to mention CPD to be logged.

Retail Round-up asked five pharmacists if they take paperwork home with them. There was a resounding “yes” from all five. One even said that he carries a large crate home and back again each day.

Even those who employ accountants to deal with items like VAT returns and payroll estimate they spend about 16 hours a month on paperwork.

Sagar Patel, proprietor of Herbert & Herbert in Hounslow, Middlesex, comments: “I try to do [paperwork] at work, but I don’t get much done — my attention is needed for MURs, counselling patients and making sure their needs are met.” Undoubtedly, there is some paperwork that is best dealt with outside opening hours — writing an SOP, for example, might require uninterrupted concentration — but there are some useful strategies to keep this to a minimum.

The trick is to adopt an efficient system and make this a habit. One such system is to ensure that as soon you have a piece of paper in your hand, you deal with it in one of four ways: act, file, throw away or pass on.

Act If the piece of paper is something you need to deal with yourself, the general rule is not to move onto the next piece of paper (or envelope) until the first is dealt with — do not waste time looking at the same paper twice.

And a tip from Noel Baumber, proprietor of Barrowbygate Pharmacy in Grantham, Lincolnshire, is to create a pleasant and comfortable desk space, both in the pharmacy and at home: “It helps the paperwork if you enjoy the desk spaces you create for yourself.”

File Every piece of paper that is not thrown away should have a home and should be filed immediately. Large ring binders are probably best for this. Use logical categories and clear labels to create an accessible filing system, putting most recent items at the top of each section. Bear in mind that some papers may need to be kept for years.

For example, invoices are kept to check against statements at the end of each month but accountants at the National Pharmacy Association recommend keeping them for longer because HM Revenue and Customs can ask to see invoices going back six years. Plenty of labelled storage boxes come in handy here.

In addition, make sure you file only what is essential. Files should be reviewed periodically and marked with a date for destruction.

Throw away “Any junk mail goes straight in the bin without reading,” Mr Patel says. However, pharmacists might consider shredding bills and anything confidential or sensitive, says Raj Nutan, pharmacy business manager at the NPA.

In addition, you should be aware that the Royal Pharmaceutical Society’s “Professional standards and guidance for patient confidentiality” states: “Disposing of patient identifiable information may involve shredding documentation, or alternatively placing it in confidential waste or deleting the information by way of a permanent marker.”

Pass on “Increasing responsibility of staff can provide a quick win,” says Mr Nutan. Delegation is a classic time management strategy. Mr Nutan recommends that pharmacists look at a model day and what their staff do at half-hour intervals to find the quieter times when staff can be given extra tasks, such as sorting the mail, filing or basic book-keeping.

“A significant amount of work can be done by staff, eg, checking invoices against delivery notes, then statements and authorising payment. Also a lot of the rubbish can be filtered out by them. I only ask to see stuff marked ‘private and confidential’,” says Tony Schofield, a pharmacist in South Shields.

Paperwork can also be passed on by contracting out activities, for example, various companies offer support for dealing with health and safety.

Although the golden rule is to deal with each piece of paper once only, in reality this can be difficult. An alternative is to have two trays into which to split “act” papers: one for items that need to be dealt with urgently, for example, a VAT return — late returns could spell poor cash flow — and one for things that can wait. A tip from Chris Howland-Harris, proprietor of Ashgrove Pharmacy in Bristol, is to further divide the urgent pile into work that can be done in between daily activities (eg, paying bills), paperwork that can best be done by going into work half an hour early once a week (eg, VAT returns) and paperwork that needs to be done outside the pharmacy.

Utopia

“The best thing you can do is to try to process as much as you can electronically,” says Riaz Esmail at Fairview Pharmacy in Burnt Oak, Middlesex.

Of course, Utopia would be a paperless dispensary. It is hoped that electronic prescribing will mean that there will be no need to send a bundle of paper to the Prescription Pricing Authority each month. However, although the system may save paper, Mr Nutan says we need to wait to judge whether it will save time: “It will involve a change to traditional dispensing processes and until then we should wait to see the detail.”

It is also hoped that suppliers of patient medication record systems will offer programs that will record interventions and conduct audits (some may already be doing so).

Wholesalers have also been working towards reducing paperwork. For example, in May, AAH launched a pilot of an electronic proof of delivery system (where customers are asked to confirm a delivery by signing on the screen of a terminal), which gets rid of paper delivery notes.

Actions that can be taken today to reduce the volume of paper in pharmacies, however, include reducing paper correspondence by using the internet and email. (For example, it is now possible to communicate with HM Revenue and Customs via broadband.)

In addition, most journals can be accessed online and the NPA makes various resources available on the members-only section of its website. Publications that are not read can be cancelled.

Another possibility is to invest in a scanner so all documents you want to keep can be kept on your computer (but do not forget to back up your files). Contact management programs are available so that business cards can be scanned and details are easy to retrieve.