Maximising your membership with Jamie McNair

Pharmacists and their teams, each and every day, deliver extraordinary service to their local communities, supporting patients to manage their health and providing advice and guidance to those in need.

The pressures facing community pharmacy are immense.

However, in spite of political, economic and environmental challenges, pharmacy continues to rise above and put patients at the heart of everything they do – often in the face of adversity and with an ever-expanding workload.

If you are feeling in your pharmacies that you are very, very busy and simply can’t cut through this maze of continuous bureaucracy and increasing pressure, you’re not alone. This is the shape of things as they are, it’s the reality of where we work.

The pharmacy landscape continues to change at an ever-quickening pace. Accelerated by COVID, patients are wanting access to healthcare in a different way and on their own terms. This combined with a newly found appreciation for bricks and mortar pharmacies presents us with a unique opportunity.

More and more members are turning to Numark to tap into the benefits of membership. We are committed to offering solutions that help you drive profitability, identify commercial opportunities, provide resources to deliver both NHS and private services and relieve the pressure of running your pharmacy business.

Commercially Savvy

Commercially, prescription and items retention continues to be important for pharmacy and we must recognise this, but as margins are threatened and as the environment gets tougher, it’s incumbent on us to make sure we are working on behalf of our members to give the best commercial deals.

Our ‘strength in numbers’ means we have the capability to negotiate hard with our manufacturer partners across a range of generics and branded medicines, which we provide through our Numerics and Brand Support Schemes. We also negotiate with suppliers across a number of pharmacy consumables to ensure you are getting the best deal available whether on prescription bags, OTC lines or controlled drugs registers.

And of course we have our retail promotional programme which is designed to provide everything you need to grow your OTC business.

We can help make your business more profitable, more efficient and in turn release time so you can focus on what you do best.

Stepping into Digital

Finding efficiencies within the day-to-day processes that currently monopolise your time will be critical for the future. The service agenda means that you will need to adopt technology driven solutions that find you time in your day to enable you to focus on other areas of growth.

Importantly these solutions can commercially transform your business whether through smarter purchasing on ‘rules based’ ordering systems such as PharmAssist or improving stock holding, safety and cash flow through Golden Tote.

Add to this our recent acquisition of the Co-op Health app and you can start to see how tech driven platforms can begin to help you steal a march on the competition, through offering your patients a blend of online and face-to-face healthcare support and advice.

Embracing Pharmacy Services

The Government recognises that pharmacy is perfectly placed to deliver a range of patient services and are fully prepared to remunerate accordingly. As you will have seen from the recent introduction of the DMS and the £6 million funding given to community pharmacies in the last year through the CPCS, offer a service and funding will follow.

Our service offering provides everything you need to set up, market and deliver both NHS and private services. We can help you tap into NHS remuneration opportunities as well as provide profit modelling solutions that will help you decide which private services would be most viable for your business.

Excelling in Customer Care

Customer experience of community pharmacy has changed beyond recognition and presents us with an opportunity to tap into that changed perception. The value that people place on pharmacy has increaed as a result of the impact of COVID, you kept your doors open when others closed theirs. This really has resonated with the population.

Numark can help you further support patients by providing training for your team and tapping into the many customer facing opportunities that will exist post COVID. Locking in customers for life will be high on the agenda for pharmacy in the future, and whether you achieve this through a compelling OTC offering, a service portfolio or by utilising the Numark app, everything you need to embrace customer centric is taken care of.

Fighting Your Corner

Lastly and most importantly – you have an ally in Numark. We continue to lobby Government for fair funding and actively share with them that critical role you play as the third pillar of the NHS. We actively engage MPs at a local level, we actively engage with members to share their stories and we actively engage with communities – and we will not stop until the Government recognises you and remunerates you appropriately.

Now, more than ever before, community pharmacy needs an organisation like Numark. We’ve got to work together because together we’re stronger. It’s through the close relationship that binds us that we will see off the challenges out there and create opportunities that firmly place us in the centre of patient health.

We are champions of community pharmacy. Long live local pharmacy.

Together we’re stronger.