Have you ever seen a pilot loading passengers’ luggage? Or a CEO organizing the mail?
Or, a pharmacy owner managing the front-end displays? Wait a minute…
Independent community pharmacy owners wear many different hats. And while it’s important to keep tabs on the various elements of your business, you can’t do it all.
When you delegate tasks, you free up your time to think about the big picture of your business.
Here are five tasks pharmacy owners can—and should—hand off to others for a more efficient pharmacy.
1. Marketing
Your pharmacy needs marketing. But you probably aren’t a marketer by trade or by heart.
Hiring an employee to handle marketing or recruiting a marketing agency is a smart business decision.
Your marketing efforts will be more effective and so will your pharmacy’s operations.
2. Front-end management
You probably don’t have time to merchandise your front-end products.
Instead, hire a front-end manager. Designating an individual to handle buying, merchandising, and rearranging products can improve profitability.
Be sure to have a pharmacist available to help patients with over-the-counter (OTC) product questions, but leave everything else front end-related to your front-end manager.
3. Daily operations
You don’t need to handle day-to-day operations, such as inputting patient information, managing prescription data, or handling claims reconciliations. You can even delegate purchasing to a staff member.
Train your staff well, so they can handle these tasks. Or, invest in automation to maximize efficiency, reduce errors, and take tasks completely out of people’s hands.
4. Inventory management
As your pharmacy’s biggest asset, inventory is important. But that doesn’t mean you have to handle placing orders daily.
Train a trusted staff member to handle ordering and managing inventory. Work with the staff member to order profitably and efficiently. Teach him or her how to optimize organization and workflow so that items are easy-to-find and always there when the pharmacist needs them.
Or, invest in a computer system that has perpetual inventory management capabilities, making it easier on your staff and more efficient for your business.
The importance of a task shouldn’t determine delegation; the required knowledge and skill should.
Delegating important tasks like purchasing may require considerable time upfront for training, but it’s ultimately a time-saver for you. (Bonus tip: With purchasing tools provided through PBA Health’s ProfitGuard service, anyone can easily maximize item-by-item savings and rebates.)
5. The checkout
Your patients’ checkout experience matters.
But just because the checkout is important doesn’t mean you need to ring up purchases.
Trust other employees to run the checkout and let the pharmacist spend time on patient care.
Create a more successful pharmacy when you delegate.
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