Page 45 - Retail Pharmacy November/Decemeber 2020

A year like no other Capital Chemist We entered 2020 with 12 pharmacies looking out their front doors to flames and ash. An unfathomable catastrophe, but we were proud to see our partners, pharmacists and staff lead their communities to keep the basic health infrastructure going under dire circumstances. The outreach from industry friends was overwhelming. Dozens of suppliers reached out to us with products to support devastated communities – too many to mention, but it’s imperative that we draw attention to Arrotex and Symbion. Both donated $50,000 to affected stores with no questions asked. They just wanted to get the money into the ravaged communities where it could do the most good. Support through hard times with software innovations Andrew Hall, General Manager of Pharmacy Technology, Symbion I think every year brings some key defining challenges. In 2020 the challenges faced by community pharmacy on the frontline have been extraordinary. As tough as this past year has been, we at Minfos, a pharmacy management software business, have done our best behind the scenes to support pharmacies using our software through these defining challenges. We’ve focused specifically on delivering new innovations designed to help improve the dispensary workflow and increase store productivity and efficiency. Earlier this year, electronic prescriptions were introduced, which has changed how pharmacies operate. To help you adapt to this government initiative, we integrated the e-prescription process within our Minfos Dispense workflow. This means Then we experienced the Canberra hailstorm, which injured staff and destroyed cars across the centre of the ACT. But nothing could have prepared us for the massive and immediate impact on our businesses from Covid-19. We were lucky in that our biannual conference took place just before it became apparent that lockdown was inevitable. This gave us the chance to develop a strategy to keep our stores, staff and communities safe, which continues to serve us well to this day. It was during ‘the troubles’, as we’ve termed the Covid panic in March and April, that our pharmacy at Chisholm won the 2020 Pharmacy of the Year award. While no big ceremony at APP was possible, we’re so proud of \[managing partner\] Rebecca Young and her team. It’s not the first time we’ve won this award, and it won’t be the last, but it will certainly be the most unique. Coming out the other side of lockdown continues to surprise us. Our model of neighbourhood pharmacies, providing grassroots healthcare at local level, serves us well, with surprising levels pharmacies can now dispense paper scripts and e-scripts using one integrated system. What’s more, we included this updated dispense workflow for free as part of the Minfos subscription. Since the integration, we’ve been incrementally updating and improving the dispense workflow to add more functionality as e-scripts has evolved. Another function that our customers are finding useful in their dispensary is the patient communication tool, Minfos SMS Connect. Pharmacies using Minfos can dispense scripts and send the ‘script-ready’ text message to the patient straight from Minfos, as part of their dispense workflow. This is a useful tool for busy pharmacies that don’t want to make lots of phone calls but still need to effectively communicate with customers. In October, we introduced Minfos eQueue, where e-scripts can be dispensed electronically – from start to finish. With this iteration of our software, pharmacies can continue to use the existing e-prescriptions paper token workflow, move to a more electronic process, or use a combination of both. We also added the ability to group multiple e-scripts from a patient into a of growth. This reassures us that our customers feel safe with us and that we’re meeting their needs despite pressures from the outside. But amid all of this, the pressures of our industry continued unabated. Electronic scripts have been a huge success, with all our pharmacies being ‘fully activated’ well before the original timeline. We continue to push our service focus, where we have conversations about health, where we solve problems, and where we improve the health of our communities. single electronic basket and combine a family’s e-scripts into their own single electronic basket. eQueue is also smart enough to automatically manage the order of the script basket based on wait times. Once again, we focused on delivering an evolution that minimises change management and can be smoothly managed within one Dispense system. Recently we updated the Minfos Help Centre, which is more user friendly and resource rich than ever before. In a year where so much of our lives has moved online, we wanted to create a one-stop educational library and support hub for our customers. The idea is to provide pharmacies with easy access to bite-sized help articles, best-practice guides, videos, insights, product updates and news. This should effectively help our customers to navigate through every aspect of Minfos in a centralised platform. We’re proud of the part we’ve played in helping pharmacies using our software during recent challenges. We have many more exciting innovations that we’re planning to introduce in 2021, so join our LinkedIn channel to stay tuned. ANNUAL REPORT 43 RETAIL PHARMACY • NOV/DEC 2020