What were the challenges in your pharmacy relating to dispensary workflow?

Luke:  Our pharmacy enjoyed four to five years of sustained growth as the business expanded. During this time, we felt the dispensary was under increasing strain, and things had to change if we were to maintain our high level of patient care. We were dutiful in providing customer access to pharmacists, while the dispensary workflow was putting a significant strain on our entire pharmacy, at the expense of pharmacist–patient contact time. We wanted to consider automation to increase this engagement and provide improved patient outcomes.

What elements were considered regarding automation and the pharmacy workflow?

Luke:  The decision to automate was primarily about providing and maintaining ready access to our pharmacists. It was the pharmacists, we felt, who were the most suitably equipped to provide up-to-date and comprehensive medication advice. The patient seeks access and engagement with the pharmacist, yet they seemed to display a sense of unease interrupting them. It made little sense therefore having such a key person tucked away at the back of the dispensary, inaccessible to patients. We wanted to differentiate ourselves and facilitate better access and engagement between the patient and the pharmacist. This, we reasoned, would be achieved by embracing a fully automated dispensing model where the pharmacists were accessible to give the latest medication and health advice.

With a host of automation solutions available, what path did you follow in choosing a BD Rowa™ ?

Luke:  We considered four main companies offering automation and quickly identified two that were going to meet our needs. The two short-listed systems were chosen because they would deliver the efficiencies that we ultimately sought. At the end of our due diligence process, we decided on the BD Rowa™ system because we felt it would help us achieve our primary goal of providing greater patient–pharmacist access. It was also reinforced by reliability — BD is an established company with a reputable product and tremendous local support.

There was no denying that the financial cost was the biggest consideration we identified. We wanted to ensure that there was a measurable cost-benefit to the business. And by doing that, we felt that if we could differentiate ourselves and make pharmacists more accessible to the patient, that’s where the strength of our business and the core values would resonate. We also had to consider cash flow and ensure that we didn’t put a big strain on the business in the short term. We carefully considered dispensary logistics as part of planning the refit, accommodating a new dispensary and all the fun that comes with that.