My name is John Mcneill and am pharmacist and Area Manager for Reach Pharmacy Group. A few years ago we decided to introduce more services into the pharmacy due to the drop in margins from the dispensing of prescriptions and the increased amount of staff overhead in order to handle increased prescription dispensing volumes. I’ve always had an interest in Travel Health since university days and after researching the local area and speaking to our local surgeries decided to provide this service to the community. The training was extensive and involved training e.g. First Aid training ( Life Support, Anaphylaxis, BLS etc ) and Yellow Fever administration. This was alongside how to set up and manage the admin side of running a Travel Health Clinic day to day. After launching the Travel Health Clinic it took around 6-12 months to become established as word of mouth began to spread. During this time we also introduced other services eg Ear Wax Removal, Vitamin B Injections. It soon dawned on us that we could not manage providing these services by just using a paper appointments diary as trying to balance running the pharmacy and staying on top of bookings was becoming unmanageable. We needed to find a solution where taking service bookings could be done much more efficiently and let us increase services at the same time. We had already changed over to an electronic CD Register ( Clara ) a year or so ago as using an old fashioned paper register was taking up far too much time which freed up our team up to drive more services ( like the ones alluded to above ) and increase services income. So I realised this was the same issue with having a paper book for managing appointments and decided to ask Clara for advice. It just so happened that Clara had a pharmacy services booking appointment calendar as part if their offering and after speaking to the Clara team we opted for a demo of this functionality. To say we were blown away was an understatement! It was exactly what we needed! After a trial period with the product so our team could get comfortable with operating it ( it is really simple to use and plenty of help on hand with Clara’s training articles and live chat ) we introduced it for all of our private services and have never looked back. Its managed to give us some breathing space and customers are really happy using it. We have seen a massive increase in service bookings and revenue has increased by 50%. The reason we have been able to do this is down to the fact the Clara bookings system lets us be more organised and we are in control of when the diary is open or closed dependent on pharmacy workloads. Some advantages of using Clara are: - Let’s you take upfront deposits so reducing ‘ no shows’ meaning the likely hood of your time being wasted is significantly reduced - Take upfront bookings for seasonal services e.g. flu vaccinations - Clara can set up a booking’s widget on your website for the customer to book straight into your appointment calendar. - You can market the appointments calendar on search engines/ Social Media which helps increase booking There is an option of two-way communication for any questions customers may want to ask about the service - You can set up bespoke health risk assessment questions, meaning the customer has been fully triaged before attending the appointment and therefor reducing the time taken at the face to face appointment All in all we have no hesitation in recommending using Clara’s Pharmacy Services appointment calendar as it increases service revenue and makes booking a lot more smoother for both customers and your pharmacy team. John Mcneill Area Manager Reach Pharmacy Group
Posted on: Clara