1. Streamline your inventory:
The major expense for a pharmacy is the cost of medications and supplies. One way to improve your bottom line is to manage your inventory which in turn will reduce wastage and ensure that you always have the right number of products you need on hand. You should consider using management software or working with a consultant to help you optimise your stock levels.
2. Generic Brands:
As you would be aware, generic branded medications are cheaper to purchase than brand-name medications. By switching to more generic brands where possible, you can reduce your purchase costs and therefore increase your profit. Sales staff should be trained to suggest generic brands to patients on a regular basis.
3.Offer additional services:
Look for new revenue streams by offering additional services. Some examples include vaccinations, health screenings, genetic testing etc. You could also look at offering other health related products such as supplements and vitamins.
4. Refine your pricing:
Another way to increase profitability is to optimise your pricing. This can be achieved by monitoring medication pricing trends and making sure you are charging competitive prices whilst also maintaining healthy profit margins. As prices as constantly changing, this can be more time consuming than the other listed strategies.
5. Promote your business:
If you want to sell additional services then you need to make sure you are promoting all of the services that your pharmacy offers. This can be executed through running promotional campaigns through social media as an example. This will increase the brand awareness of your pharmacy and hopefully attract new customers. Another way is to create loyalty programs for repeat customers.
6. Implement technology:
Consider integrating technology into your pharmacy to increase productivity and reduce costs. For instance, you could expedite your workflow by utilising electronic prescriptions and medication management software. Having an online ordering system for medications and a despatch service or kerbside pickup is an alternative.
7. Customer Service:
This seems like an obvious one, but it is amazing to see how many pharmacies get this wrong. Customer service is pivotal to repeat business. Patients are willing to drive the extra 5 minutes to visit a pharmacy with better customer service than its competitors.
8. Team members (staff):
This could be the most important factor to improving profitability as it impacts on the majority of the points above. Having the right team members will improve the profitability of your pharmacy so be quick to hire but even quicker to fire if someone doesn’t meet the standards of your pharmacy.
By implementing any of these strategies, you can increase the profitability of your pharmacy while continuing to provide high quality care to your patients. It is important to remember that profitability is not the only goal when running a pharmacy, it isto balance it with providing the best care possible to the community that you are serving.
