The Future of Pharmacy: Where Is the Industry Headed?
Article by: Hope Mikaelson
Pharmacists used to play relatively passive roles in providing patient care. In the past, all they did was dispense medications. Today, though, pharmacists typically work directly with patients to provide a greater level of care and attention, which can include not just informing people about new medications but also administering vaccinations and more.
The changing role of pharmacists in their communities has already begun to impact patients’ expectations and pharmacies’ operating strategies. Read on to find out how this trend may influence the industry moving forward.
1. Changing Patient Expectations
Even before they started offering more patient education and other forms of care, pharmacists were generally kept pretty busy. These days, it can be nearly impossible for them to both fill ever-increasing volumes of medications and offer the one-on-one care that patients have come to expect.
The good news for busy pharmacists is that pharmacy automation solutions can now be implemented to take care of busywork. As a result, pharmacists and their staff now have more time to devote to speaking with patients, administering vaccines, offering advice, and caring for their communities.
2. Improvements in Patient Care and Outcomes
There are a few ways that future patients will benefit from changes in the pharmacy industry. Automating things like pill counting and medication dispensing can also reduce human error, ensuring that everyone gets the right medications while simultaneously eliminating an unnecessary source of liability for pharmacies.
Pharmacists with more time to speak with patients are also better able to emphasize the importance of medication adherence. Unfortunately, the CDC estimates that medication instruction non-adherence causes between 30 and 50% of treatment failures for patients with chronic diseases.
If pharmacists can teach patients how to avoid these problems, it could have a direct impact on treatment outcomes, improving outcomes and saving lives.
3. Added Services
Pharmacists used to do just one thing: They dispensed medications.
Today, an increasing number of pharmacists are being authorized to provide immunizations, perform certain kinds of tests, and offer other clinical interventions.
Most of these changes came about as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, given the level of patient support, many of them may be here to stay.
Pharmacists should expect to evolve with the changing times and stay engaged with the industry. That might mean not just embracing modern technologies but also engaging in ongoing training so pharmacists can offer a wider range of services.
4. An Increasingly Competitive Landscape
Recent industry trends have created a fiercely competitive landscape for independent retail pharmacies. Larger brands have been buying out community pharmacies, and vertical integration has become the norm. To complicate matters further, both specialty pharmacies and mail-order or eCommerce pharmacies have become more commonplace.
Independent pharmacies will need to take steps to remain competitive. Those steps could include embracing the technologies employed by larger chain pharmacies to make more time for patient care, streamlining workflows to eliminate inefficiencies, and expanding markets via local advertising.
The Times Are Changing
There’s no denying that the times are changing for pharmacy owners and pharmacists.
Failing to take steps to bring traditional community pharmacies into the 21st century is no longer an option. No matter how much support they have from the wider community right now, pharmacies that don’t get with the times and start finding ways to provide a greater level of patient care will quickly find themselves overrun by increasingly large nationwide brands.
