Recently published data suggest that on average 10 years ago, the average patient in England had just under 12 NHS items prescribed for them, about one a month. This average would of course arise statistically from many patients with no medication at all prescribed, and some with many items prescribed every single month.
The most recent prescribing data says that this average number has now increased to around 18, a 50% increase in dispensing workload in a decade. Those of you who have been dispensing for the last 10 years will probably find the statistic less surprising than those who have not done so. Clearly the drivers of the change include more aggressive treatment of long term conditions by GPs to meet NICE guidelines and practice targets, better informed patients, and in some areas PCT led initiatives to cut waste (in theory!) by reducing average periods of treatment.
Those pharmacies who were already close to their limits of storage space, and possibly close to their limits of work capacity and work rate a decade ago, are now probably losing patients and losing dispensing to pharmacies who can serve them more efficiently.
Whilst I would never suggest that pharmacy automation is a panacea, for many pharmacies the current dispensing workload really justifies quite urgently researching the costs and benefits of automation before business is lost, or future growth is compromised. Not only can automation increase work capacity and work rate compared to manual picking, and save space, it can also lead to a significant reduction in picking errors which can so easily become dispensing errors.
Pharmacy Consulting Ltd can offer pharmacists independent advice on making the best of automation from the planning stage right through to amending working practices for optimisation of efficiency, after the picking machine is installed.