In part 1 of our Pharmacy Profile featuring pharmacist Chi Ting (Stanley) Pang from Northern Territory’s first Wizard Pharmacy in Darwin’s Casuarina, he tells of his pride in establishing the Northern Territory’s first Wizard Pharmacy amid the pandemic’s challenges, discusses technology’s impact on the industry, and the values and services that have endeared the pharmacy to the diverse community it serves.
What have been some of your career and store highlights so far? Please elaborate on the valuable lessons learned from them.
One of my greatest career and store highlights was definitely Wizard Pharmacy’s expansion into the Northern Territory. I’d had years of experience managing pharmacies, but establishing the first Wizard Pharmacy amid the COVID-19 pandemic was a challenging yet rewarding experience. It reinforced the importance of having a supportive and engaged brand behind me. Opening a new pharmacy is challenging at the best of times, and the process wouldn’t have gone so smoothly without the experience, expertise and literal on-the-ground support of Wizard Pharmacy Services.
Since our opening, we’ve achieved significant growth in year-on-year sales and maintained excellent customer and employee satisfaction. Within the first year, we started a wide range of clinical services, such as opioid replacement therapy, compounding, Webster packing, supervised RATs, Telehealth online doctor consults and more. Our immunisation service has administered thousands of flu and COVID-19 vaccinations to the community.
It’s important to diversify the services and not rely on just one income stream, especially for a greenfield site. Find out what your competitors do, where the demands are, and what added value you can offer to your community. Build the right team and treat your team members well. In turn, they’ll treat your customers and patients well.
What are the values at your pharmacy, and why is it so important to maintain core values in community pharmacy?
The entire Wizard Pharmacy network is built around RESPECT – responsibility, empowerment, service, passion, empathy, candour and teamwork.
Having a values framework across the entire network allows us to provide our customers with a consistent experience across all our stores. No matter what Wizard Pharmacy a customer walks into, they know they’ll receive the same empathetic, knowledgeable and personalised service.
At a store level, maintaining a common set of values gives me and my team a common goal and motivation to continue serving the community the best we can. They define our culture and shape our behaviour and actions.
Why is looking after your community so important to your pharmacy? What do you think your customer base values the most about your pharmacy?
Ultimately, the reason is to improve public health. As a health professional, I’m responsible for looking after the community and providing primary healthcare and education on medications and healthy lifestyles. Pharmacists are also instrumental in promoting early detection and supplying treatments for health conditions to prevent the spread of diseases and improve well-being.
Our customer base values trust and loyalty. My team and I show care to every customer and deliver consistent satisfaction over time, which builds mutual trust and good relationships. Many of our customers have become friends and regularly visit us even when they’re not here for their shopping.
They value the variety and consistency of our services. We offer a wide range of health services and maintain good quality consistently. For example, we’ve continued providing COVID-19 booster vaccines while some other Darwin pharmacies and clinics have stopped this.
We also advocate for the community and their health needs to government officials and local organisations. We advocate updating policies and legislation to ensure access to resources for people to maintain good health in the community.
What is your most popular service, and why do you think it’s so successful? What is your advice to other pharmacies seeking to strengthen this service in their store?
I believe our vaccination service is so popular due to its convenience and accessibility, consistency in stock levels and professional delivery.
Although bookings are preferred, we never turn away anyone just because they don’t have a booking. We’re very flexible when it comes to vaccinations, and deliver them on most days of the week (except for multidose vial vaccines). Our vaccines are well stocked and ready to meet the demand. We’ve continued our COVID-19 vaccination service while many facilities in our town have ceased to provide it.
When it comes to our vaccinations, we pride ourselves on our professionalism and ‘bedside manner’, which has led to high customer satisfaction. Many patients were pleased with our pharmacist’s injection technique and the overall experience, which creates positive word-of-mouth in the community. Some even left five-star Google reviews to compliment our service.
What has been the impact of technology on pharmacy over recent years?
We’ve seen significant technological improvements in pharmacy in recent years, revolutionising many aspects of pharmacy operations and the patient’s experience. These include:
- Electronic prescriptions. These have improved the accuracy and efficiency of dispensing as information is preloaded into the system, enabling the rise of automated dispensing. There’s increased convenience for our patients as prescriptions can be sent remotely to a patient’s mobile device. Less time and storage space are needed to handle paper prescriptions, so pharmacists can better utilise the saved time and space to improve their business. It’s also an eco-friendlier option, due to the reduced use of paper and ink.
- Active Script List. This has further enhanced convenience for patients, especially if they have multiple medications. A patient’s GP can directly add any new prescription to their list, removing the need for individual eScript tokens. For pharmacists, accessing a patient’s information and prescriptions is quick and easy, streamlining record-keeping and dispensing workflow. Being able to view the complete medication list can improve patient safety as pharmacists can identify drug interactions more easily and reduce confusion when communicating with patients about their medications.
- Telehealth and online doctor consults. These have provided effective means for patients to receive healthcare advice and prescription refills remotely, improving accessibility to care in regional or underserved areas.
- Digital communication channels. Their implementation has also allowed us to feel more connected to our network and supported by the Wizard Pharmacy Services team.
This feature was originally published in the June issue of Retail Pharmacy magazine.
