Guild Pharmacy of the Year finalist: Capital Chemist Southlands, ACT

Having a partnership willing to close a store and focus more of its attention on professional service delivery in its remaining store has presented challenges and opportunities for Canberra pharmacy, Capital Chemist Southlands.

Located in the suburb of Mawson, the pharmacy had a ‘relative’, Mawson Pharmacy, in the same small shopping centre. And it was owned by the same partnership group.

With pressures on the industry and the need for transformation, the decision was made to close Mawson Pharmacy, a move the Capital Chemist Southlands partners, Stacey Fuller and Louise McLean, said proved to have been exactly the right decision.

“What this did was to enable us to offer a wider range of health services in the one location,” Ms McLean said.

“All staff and services from Mawson Pharmacy are now located at Capital Chemist Southlands.”

This means the pharmacy has a staff of more than 35 and to ensure services are kept up to date, training and education are a big focus of the behind-the-scenes operations.

“We embrace the different strengths of our team to maximise the health solutions we offer to our customers.”

Ms Fuller and Ms McLean, as managing partners, regularly attend pharmacy conferences, are under the guidance of a business coach and seek to provide the tools for our staff to learn.

“Our aspiration is to train our pharmacists in vast areas of healthcare which will future proof our pharmacy and enable us to continue to provide a high quality, service-driven model of pharmacy,” Ms McLean said.

The pharmacy also sees the implementation of the components of the 6CPA as being the basis to maintaining its long-term viability.

“We are maximising the potential of the 6CPA to not only deliver PBS medicines, but also to expand our professional services including medication management and enabling us to concentrate on evidence-based, patient-focused services,” Ms Fuller said.

“We believe our role in primary healthcare has evolved to areas of prevention, early intervention and ongoing care.

“Through changing our focus from selling medicines to offering a health solution to customers, we believe that our business will thrive in the future pharmacy environment.

The pharmacy in 2016 achieved a number of milestones in the delivery of professional services not previously available at the pharmacy.

Examples of these included pharmacist administered immunisation and anaemia screening.

“We also offer DAAs, staged supply and are equipped for implementation of eHealth,” Ms Fuller said.

“We are expanding into diabetes disease management with our accredited Pharmacist Diabetes Educator, offering education on insulin, blood glucose testing, injection techniques, and providing immediate HbA1c testing.”

To further reinforce its emphasis on delivering professional services to the community, the pharmacy has developed and implemented a ‘Pharmacist On the Floor’ role to give its customers immediate access to pharmacists.

A major extension and re-fit of the pharmacy which was completed in February 2015 and saw the addition of two new private consulting rooms.

“These private consultation areas have enabled our service-driven business model to thrive,” Ms McLean said.

The pharmacy has a strong and enthusiastic commitment to community engagement is which is only possible with the support of its team and customers.

“An excellent example of this was the Capital Chemist Southlands’ initiative for a Christmas Giving Tree in 2015. The combined efforts of our staff and customers alike saw the donation of hundreds of gifts to the ACT Eden Monaro Cancer Support Group for distribution amongst the local community.”

More information is available on the Pharmacy Guild of Australia’s website.