Flexibility in community pharmacy: a qualitative study of business models and cognitive services

Abstract

Active support and encouragement to transition from being dependent on dispensing to implementing services is needed. The study showed that pharmacies where services were implemented and showed success are those strategically differentiating their businesses to become focused health care providers. This holistic approach should inevitably influence the sustainability of services.

Building Community Pharmacy Work System Capacity for Medication Therapy Management

“…Some of the themes identified by Chui and her colleagues also resonate well with the results of work conducted in Australia by Roberts, Feletto and their colleagues [32][33][34][35][36].…”

“…These eight themes were: (1) culture, (2) One area is based upon research conducted in the United States by Doucette and colleagues [31] in which they identified organizational factors that influence pharmacy practice change. The other area is based upon research conducted in Australia by Roberts, Feletto and colleagues [32][33][34][35][36] in which they used an organizational theory framework [37] to provide a greater understanding of change processes and their facilitators in community pharmacies.…”

“…Through their initial research [32,33] , Roberts, Feletto, et al were able to identify the following facilitators of practice change that explained almost 50% of total variance in their measures of change: relationship with physicians, remuneration, pharmacy layout, patient expectations, manpower/staff, communication/teamwork, and external support/assistance. They applied Volberda's four organizational flexibilities to different business models that Australian pharmacies use [34] and identified five key areas in which capacity could be built. Those areas are: (1) planning (creating a business plan), (2) performance (setting financial goals and allocating resources), (3) service awareness by the customers, (4) people and processes, and (5) infrastructure [35].…”

“…Then, to help complement those self-assessments, the work by Feletto et al revealed four types of Organizational Flexibility [34][35][36] that community pharmacy decision-makers can use for conducting a self-assessment of management style changes that are needed in order to create capacity for patient-care services such as MTM (see Table 3). This step would help identify an organization's "responsiveness for change.…”

Community pharmacy in Australia: A health hub destination of the future

“…Overall the core finding of this study was the potential for community pharmacies to move beyond medication supply and become a health hub destination that assisted consumers with chronic conditions across three key domains: health care system navigation, medication management and eventually, health advocacy. Although the shift for pharmacy to provide professional health services has been emphasised both nationally 30 and internationally, 7,31,32 the notion that they could provide consumer support to navigate the health system and act as health advocates broadens the patient-centred approach to care. Barriers associated with an extended health care role were also discussed and reinforce those reported in the literature.…”