Scribd
Upload
25 views5 pages

Pharmacy Management

Inventory management is important for pharmacies to improve cash flow, increase margins, and provide better customer service. Effective inventory management requires monitoring stock levels, avoiding excess and insufficient stock, reducing expired goods, identifying sales trends, tracking batch numbers, practicing first-in-first-out dispensing, managing high-risk medications, detecting shrinkage, and automating processes. Modern pharmacy management software can help with tasks like inventory management to run a pharmacy more efficiently.

Uploaded by

chad
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
25 views5 pages

Pharmacy Management

Inventory management is important for pharmacies to improve cash flow, increase margins, and provide better customer service. Effective inventory management requires monitoring stock levels, avoiding excess and insufficient stock, reducing expired goods, identifying sales trends, tracking batch numbers, practicing first-in-first-out dispensing, managing high-risk medications, detecting shrinkage, and automating processes. Modern pharmacy management software can help with tasks like inventory management to run a pharmacy more efficiently.

Uploaded by

chad
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 5

Why is inventory

management important in
pharmacies?
Inventory management is the biggest ongoing cost challenge in any pharmacy.
Excess and unsold stock ties up money that could be used to improve the services
your community pharmacy offers.

Not having necessary items in stock or on order leads to a bad customer experience,
which can see patients taking their prescriptions elsewhere.

Poor inventory management can also result in failing to sell items before their expiry
dates or not putting returned or uncollected repeat prescriptions back into stock.
In short, effective inventory management is necessary to improve cash flow,
increase margins by reducing waste and improve the service you offer. While all
modern pharmacies now use a PMR system to manage dispensing, some software
packages also integrate stock and inventory management functions in this process,
automating stock checks and even orders needed to fulfil prescriptions.

These reflect the importance of pharmacy inventory management by


making tasks like the following more efficient:

Monitoring stock levels


Monitoring stock levels used to be a time-consuming task, requiring pharmacy staff
to manually count items. Today’s PMR systems can synchronise with your ePOS
systems, and automatically update inventory levels as items are sold. If you update
the price of an item, this will automatically be applied the next time the item is sold.
In addition, the software gives you a real-time view of stock levels, ensuring you
have the information you need to optimise them.

To take the first step in a transformed process, download our free guide, ‘How
to change PMR provider’. You’ll find everything required to streamline your
process and make the customer-pharmacist relationship more manageable
than ever
Simply click below to get started
Get my guide

Avoiding excess stock


If you can prevent overstocking, while making sure popular items are always
available, you can deliver good customer service at a lower inventory cost. Good
pharmacy software will allow you to instantly analyse the rate at which items sell,
allowing you to reduce future stock levels to a more optimal level.

Avoiding under stocking


It’s equally important to avoid under stocking. Not having the items your patients
need means you’ll be left owing them prescription balances or they’ll go elsewhere.
A decent pharmacy software package should provide you with intelligence to help
you analyse how much stock you need to iron out ‘often owed’ items and alert you
when certain items fall below a predefined level.

Reducing dead stock


Another drawback of overstocking is that it leads to ‘dead’ stock – unsold medicines
that have passed their expiry date. Because these can’t be sold, they result in lost
revenue. A significant amount of dead stock is generated by uncollected repeat
prescriptions. In the past, keeping tabs on these items was time-consuming and
difficult to keep on top of. Today, pharmacy inventory software can alert you when a
prescription hasn’t been collected, which allows you to return items to your inventory
before their expiry dates.

Identifying sales trends


Good inventory management in pharmacies requires the ability to spot and react to
sales trends. For example, in spring and summer, there is greater demand for both
prescription and OTC hay fever medicines. Similarly, demand for cold and flu
remedies spikes in autumn and winter. However, there are many other factors that
can influence sales trends. For example, if a manufacturer releases the first generic
version of a popular drug, it’s likely that GPs will increasingly prescribe this. If you
have software that allows you to analyse usage trends at a glance, you can make
sure you adjust your stock order levels accordingly – whether demand for an item is
rising or falling. In effect, you are making smart use of your data to increase your
ROI.

Lot tracking
Lot tracking is of key importance to inventory management in pharmacies. If you can
quickly identify and locate specific batches of medication, it’s easier to remove them
from inventory. You may need to do this because a particular batch has expired or,
in rare circumstances, because it has been recalled. You can speed up lot tracking
by using a barcode scanner that integrates with your pharmacy software. This will
immediately tell you whether an item belongs to a specific batch.

First-in, first-out dispensing


Another benefit of lot tracking ensures that you can more easily practise ‘first-in, first-
out’ dispensing. By organising inventory by batch, you can ensure that all items are
dispensed with the nearest possible expiry date. Effective inventory software will
ensure that you dispense all items in one batch before moving on to the next.

There’s an endless number of reasons to integrate digitalised inventory


management, including reduced waste and shorter waiting times

Find out more with our free guide, ‘How to change PMR provider’
Get my guide

High-risk medicine management


High-risk medicine includes items that are extremely expensive, are in low demand
or have a short shelf life – or any combination of the three. As a result, your
inventory management procedures need to identify these items, so you can offer
refills without keeping large stocks of them. You can use pharmacy software to flag
up high-risk medicines, allowing you to use next-day delivery to co-ordinate repeat
prescriptions with the relevant customers. In this way, you lessen the risk of ordering
in items that won’t get prescribed, leaving you to shoulder the cost.

Spotting shrinkage
Before the days of digital inventory management, spotting shrinkage usually took a
full manual stocktake. Modern pharmacy software makes it possible to spot unusual
activity much faster. If remaining stock does not reflect the number of items sold or
prescribed, you can quickly find out which items are affected. This allows you to get
on top of the problem by investigating why items have gone missing – whether it’s
because checkout procedures aren’t being followed correctly, or even because
medicines have been stolen.

Automating processes

Effective pharmacy inventory management relies more and more on automating


processes. While not every community pharmacy has the resources to invest in
robots that automate dispensing, many use software that helps them reduce the time
they spend on administrative tasks, ordering and delivery processes.
For example, some PMR systems will automatically re-order items when stocks run
low. Barcode scanners make light work of regular stock taking. Integrated POS
systems automatically update stock levels as sales are made. GPs send repeat
prescriptions electronically, meaning they can be fulfilled before a patient comes into
the pharmacy. As technology improves, inventory management is becoming more
powerful and user-friendly – allowing pharmacy staff to concentrate on providing a
better customer experience.

One final tip…

Effective inventory management saves time, saves money and gives patients a
much better service. However, to maximise the gains you get from inventory
management, it’s vital to make sure your PMR software is fit for purpose.
If your system is struggling to cope, it may be time to switch to a package such
as Pharmacy Manager.
To help you evaluate whether you need to change provider, we’ve created a free,
downloadable guide, How to change PMR provider.

It can also help you make the transition to new software much smoother.
How To Change PMR
Provider
Good inventory management helps manage your current and future business. To
improve the way your pharmacy operates, download our free guide ‘How To Change
PMR Provider’.
Get my guide
Tags: PMR Pharmacy Manager | Author: Cegedim Healthcare Solutions
Share this story, Choose your platform

You might also like