Keys to Avoiding Refitting Disaster in Your Pharmacy

Over recent years, of the retail sectors who have survived the onslaught of supermarkets, few have needed to embrace change more extensively than pharmacy. In previous times the community pharmacy would often find that the turnover split of business would be roughly equal, with about 50% coming from over the counter sales and the balance from the dispensary. The consequence was that much of shop space was allocated to a wide range of product on shelves and perhaps 25% of shop area to the dispensing area.

Times have changed. With the vast range of items naturally thought of as chemist items being very competitively available in the supermarket, margins became squeezed and sales plummeted. Two factors remained in the Pharmacist's favour:

• The need to have a licence to open a pharmacy.
• The continuing restriction on pharmacy only medicines.

The result was that there were still real opportunities for successful growth by expansion and redevelopment but the effective result was that most investment became redirected from retail to the dispensing areas.

Volumes of prescriptions increased over the years, SME groups formed and then were absorbed, many Medical Practices amalgamated into Medical centres and the pharmacies, despite setbacks imposed by various acts of government, thrived. In particular, one could say that pharmacy has generally proven pretty recession proof, maybe even to the extent that it has profited from the higher volume of sickness originating directly from recession.

In most instances these demographic moves have dictated that re-fitting is necessary to provide the facilities for the future. This has resulted in the consequential re-alignment of interior space from retail to dispensary and to include more patient services such as consultation rooms, providing medical testing services and taking particular account of DDA Disability requirements by employing such things as automatic entrance doors etc.

All of this process has required the input of specialist shop fitting design companies who had the knowledge and understanding of the challenges of pharmacy and how to best meet them. Embarking on the road of refitting without the valuable assistance of carefully designed pharmacy equipment can spell problems. In particular it is very important that the working environment of the dispensary operates ergonomically with correctly placed working and storage levels. Employing the right design and fitting partner is a critical element in achieving an effective refit or new premises installation. The wrong choice could result in long term problems.

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