Your Pharmacy Is Worth More Than The Prescriptions It Dispenses

Instead of starting this blog post with everything that is getting harder about pharmacy, let’s start with what you already have.

Because when I look at an established independent pharmacy, I see a collection of assets that most healthcare businesses would spend years and an enormous amount of money trying to create.

You have relationships with hundreds or thousands of patients. You have healthcare professionals who understand medications and increasingly provide a much broader range of clinical care. You have people walking through your doors every day, many of whom return month after month and year after year. You have a physical presence in your community, established relationships with prescribers and other healthcare providers, purchasing relationships, clinical knowledge, technology, a team, a brand and an understanding of the health needs of the people you serve.

Most importantly, you have something that cannot be purchased quickly: trust.

If I were building a healthcare company from scratch, I would desperately want what independent pharmacies already have. So why do we still tend to measure the value and potential of these businesses primarily by how many prescriptions you dispense?

What if the prescription were the beginning of the relationship?

Prescription volume matters. I am certainly not suggesting otherwise. But I think we limit ourselves when we see the prescription as the entire economic and patient relationship rather than one part of it.

Imagine a patient comes into your pharmacy with a new prescription for acne. In a traditional model, we dispense it, provide excellent counselling and send the patient on their way. We have done our job well.

But what is the patient trying to accomplish? They aren't trying to acquire a topical med. They are trying to manage their acne. That may involve understanding how to use their medication properly, knowing what to expect in the first few weeks of treatment, managing side effects, choosing appropriate skin care products, understanding sun protection, staying adherent long enough to see results and knowing when something isn't working and they need additional care.

When we start with the patient's need rather than the transaction, the opportunity becomes much broader. And acne is only one example. Think about women's health, diabetes, respiratory disease, cardiovascular health, dermatology, smoking cessation, travel health, vaccinations, seniors' care or medication management. In every one of those areas, pharmacies already have patients coming through the door with needs that extend beyond the prescription they are picking up that day.

This does not mean finding more things to sell people.

It means asking a much better question: What does this patient need, and where can our pharmacy appropriately help?

That is a fundamentally different way to think about growth.

Your patient doesn't see two businesses.

We need to challenge the way we have traditionally separated the dispensary from the front store. Inside pharmacy, we talk about "the pharmacy" and "the front shop" as though they are two completely different businesses that happen to share a building.

Your patient doesn't think that way. They walked into one pharmacy. If your clinical strategy says you want to become exceptional at diabetes care, but your retail strategy, marketing, website, staff training and community partnerships have nothing to do with diabetes, you are leaving a tremendous amount of opportunity disconnected.

The same applies to skin health, women's health, respiratory care, healthy aging or almost any other area where a pharmacy chooses to build expertise. What if the clinical services you offer, the products you carry, the way you merchandise them, the education you provide, the partnerships you build and the content you share all reinforced one another?

Now you aren't simply adding another service or putting another product on a shelf. You are intentionally building a destination for a particular healthcare need. And that creates a very different patient experience, but it also creates a much more defensible business. You are giving people a reason to choose you beyond convenience or prescription price.

We need to get more comfortable talking about profit.

This is where healthcare sometimes gets uncomfortable. We are very comfortable talking about patient outcomes, access, quality and service. We are considerably less comfortable talking about making money.

But if we want independent pharmacy to have a strong future, we must talk about both. A financially healthy pharmacy has greater capacity to provide exceptional patient care. Profit allows a business to hire more people, train them well, invest in technology, create better spaces, develop new programs, pay competitive wages, experiment with new ideas and support its community. It also gives an owner room to think beyond the crisis of the week.

There is nothing noble about an owner working an unsustainable number of hours to hold together an economically fragile business. There is nothing inherently patient-centred about a pharmacy being understaffed, undercapitalized and unable to invest in improvement.

Of course, the way we generate revenue matters. Pharmacy is healthcare, and clinical judgment and patient interests must remain at the centre of what we do. But good care and good business are not enemies. In fact, I would argue that the future of independent pharmacy depends on our ability to get much better at building businesses where the two reinforce one another.

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