There was a fresh sense of urgency among pharmacy owners at Pharmacy Connect’s recent Pharmacy Ownership Masterclass, according to presenter Kian Ghahramani, the national pharmacy lead for RSM Australia. Ghahramani explained that the urgency stems from the changes to come with the 01 Sep start date of the 60-Day Dispensing (60DD) policy. “Whether the new dispensing rules remain as is, or are modified, we felt it was important for the workshop to focus on identifying opportunities for pharmacy owners,” Ghahramani shared. Looking for ways to improve performance was vital not just for 60DD, but to combat inflation and interest rates challenges and staffing issues, he said. The Pharmacy Ownership Masterclass, sponsored by CommBank Health, saw attendees hear from subject matter experts at RSM Australia, Commbank Health and Scrypt.

During the session on purchasing a pharmacy, CommBank noted that rising interest rates was a factor that impacted risk assessment and borrowing power for pharmacies. “It’s critical that you know what the impact of 60DD will be on any pharmacy you are looking to purchase,” Ghahramani said. “On top of that, aspiring owners should not ignore the fundamental items such as lease details, financial metrics and the pharmacy offering when making their decision to purchase a pharmacy.” Scrypt spoke on the use of data to turbo-charge pharmacies’ performance, highlighting the importance of having clean data and analytical tools to improve script retention and loyalty. It also outlined that the average Australian pharmacy has 30-40% script loyalty so there is plenty of opportunity for growth. “Tools such as Scrypt are great at identifying trends in your data and making decisions to improve your script loyalty,” Ghahramani said. “Customers who are considered frequent flyers (high loyalty rate) bring tremendous value to a pharmacy and owners should look to working with these tools to convert those with low loyalty into frequent flyers,” he added. The masterclass concluded with RSM talking about key indicators in performance to drive financial outcomes, with pharmacy owners advised to implement metrics around staffing, inventory management and service offering. “The KPIs, once in place, should be used to set annual targets, and budgets to claw back the value lost, or add value to the pharmacy. “Pharmacies are in an enviable position as they hold so much data and we emphasise how important it is for owners to understand how to utilise, translate and keep this data up to date, to make timely decisions to correct any issues before they have too great an impact,” Ghahramani concluded. JG