Fintan Moore overcomes his inertia on switching dispensary systems
There is a tendency in human beings generally, and I think pharmacists in particular, to stick with ‘the devil you know’ when it comes to service providers. Your bank or your phone company might not be great to deal with or the most reliable or the best value, but you’re reluctant to change because changing can be a hassle, and there’s no cast-iron guarantee that the new company will be any better.
So for years, I was using Clanwilliam’s dispensary system, despite its various faults and foibles, but there wasn’t much else out there in terms of a viable alternative. Then in more recent times I started hearing good reports about Touchstore, but I still held off moving because I was always really busy and was never sure when might be a good time to manage the changeover.
I finally bit the bullet and moved to Touchstore in June, so now I’ve a couple of months’ experience with the new system under my belt and am delighted that I made the move. Like with any new software, it took a couple of days for us all to get to grips with the new way of putting through prescriptions because our fingers were still automatically aiming to do the old keystrokes.
Despite the new system, I reckon we were still processing prescriptions faster than with the old one because Touchstore is simply more efficient. The main time-saver is that it allows multi-item prescriptions to be repeated with one click instead of having to repeat every item individually. This is especially useful for phased dispensing — I reckon we’re saving a couple of minutes on every issue of a phased prescription. Other features, such as pricing of prescriptions, printing of reports, and stock control, are also smoother and more intuitive. The bottom line is that if you’re weighing-up whether or not to switch systems, just do it.
Speaking of the bottom line, it’s worth trying to time the move of system to the most cost-effective date possible, but don’t let that be a deal-breaker. My Clanwilliam contract was for a year, and I had to pay them for the full 12 months, even though I moved mid-year with three months remaining. I did query this, but they weren’t for budging.
I reckon we’re saving a couple of minutes on every issue of a phased prescription
I was initially feeling a bit hard-done-by until I started doing the maths. I conservatively estimate that Touchstore is saving my combined dispensing staff, including myself, at least 30 minutes every day, which is 180 minutes per week. That equates to about 25 hours per month. You can make your own mind up on how much you think that time is worth in terms of money, but for me the savings easily outweigh the wasted expense of the surplus months left on the old contract.
The road to hell
They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and I’m beginning to see the truth of that in work. I was chatting with some of the staff and we’re wondering if we’re just ‘too nice’, which is leading us to have a bigger number of ‘slightly-high-maintenance’ patients than the average pharmacy. These patients are almost all nice people, usually with genuine problems, or manageable preferences, but as they accumulate, they collectively take up more and more time and head-space.
They include couples where the husband never pays when collecting prescriptions, but the wife does, or vice versa; or the patients who pay at the end of the month, or in dribs and drabs, or query the bill; or want 31-day supplies of all tablets; or who will only take one specific generic, despite every other patient being on a different one; or who always ring on Fridays wanting stuff on Saturday that we can’t get until Monday; or expect us to hold stock of a particular item even though they’re the only patient on it; or who need bulky ostomy supplies delivered because they don’t have a car and their local pharmacy won’t drop the stuff off. You get the picture.
The funny thing is, even though it can feel at times that we’re trying to juggle a bunch of flaming torches, I think people genuinely appreciate what we do, and that’s not the worst way to spend a working day.
Pharmacy Excellence Awards
The Pharmacy Excellence Awards will be held in aid of the Pharmacy Benevolent Fund on November 30th in the Mansion House, and will recognise the efforts of pharmacists, assistants, technicians and pharmacy teams. Categories include Excellence in Community Pharmacy; Excellence in Locum Pharmacy; Equality Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Award; Hospital Pharmacy Team Award; Patient Nominated Award, and others.
More information is available on https://pharmacyexcellenceawards.ie
The Mansion House is a great venue and the event is in aid of a very worthy cause so save the date.
Fintan Moore graduated as a pharmacist in 1990 from TCD and currently runs a pharmacy in Clondalkin. His email address is: greenparkpharmacy @gmail.com.
