From Backdated to Inspirational

Sam, could you please share a little background on yourself and your journey in pharmacy?

I've been a pharmacist and a pharmacy owner since 2008. I've been part of Pharmacy 777 Shoalwater as the team leader/owner since 2012. I've had an incredible journey in this pharmacy.

We had a backdated pharmacy, which was quite dark, gloomy, with a lot of gifts, like cosmetics and items that are not really health related. And we are inside a community of mainly elderly clientele. We weren’t really reflecting the community's needs, it was a pharmacy, but not a community pharmacy.

Our journey has been all about how do we make ourselves relevant in the health space inside this community. We did a major renovation and got rid of all the gifts, the different cosmetics, and any non-health line products.

When we did set up the pharmacy, it was all about increasing efficiency inside the business. How the patient's journey is going when they're handing in the script or when they're coming in for a primary care inquiry and how well that's met. And a lot of it is to support the pharmacist, because we are a very pharmacist heavy model. We only have pharmacists handing out every single prescription and we only have pharmacists and pharmacy interns to take care of any of the primary care needs. We don't have any non-pharmacist staff serving the patients. 

It was a matter of how we create a workflow that leads to the best patient outcomes.

That has also allowed us to come up with a lot of different services that meet the needs in the community. But a lot of it has come on the back of liaising with our local doctors and a local specialist to see what services can be done, also how they can be done and how detailed they need to be and what needs are we meeting.

Throughout our 2023 PGA’s Pharmacy of the Year Award journey, our work with our elderly clientele’s journey when they go in and out of hospital, has been highlighted a lot. It is a very traumatic and stressful time for them. They don't have a lot of in-home support or a lot of mental support before or after. We do a pre-consult before they go into hospital and a post-discharge.

Once they come out, what are their needs? Do they need any support, for example, with mobility, medication management or deliveries? We are trying to make sure that all our services are relevant for those people at that phase of their life.

Outside of that, we also run a very good sleep apnoea service whereby we do have a local sleep specialist who oversees everything that we do. It does give the credibility to our local GP’s and even dentists to refer to us, because they know it's not a commercially run project.

Although it's a very commercially successful and profitable service for us, it is actually done on the back of how we can support our patients. And even outside of that, we do wound care support services, vaccinations, and general services that everyone else does as well. But all our specialised services are designed to help support the community. And in that journey, we found all our patients became very close to us, being with us in the store became very personalised.

You have just been awarded with the 2023 PGA’s Pharmacy of the Year Award. How do you feel about having just won this prestigious award?

It's a huge honour and it is a big win for the entire community in Shoalwater. I can't express how happy the whole community is. We have received so many messages, phone calls, even patients driving ten to fifteen kilometres just to come and say well done. We had all the local clubs put it up on their posts and it has just been a very, very big sort of community win. It has been phenomenal. 

Has the award inspired you or sharpened your focus about what is important for running your pharmacy? 

It 100% has. The entire team has come together and what we have always prided ourselves on is that it is all about what the patient sees and how the patient feels. The concept of how we can make that better has now become a lot clearer to us after we have won it. And we were very touched by how many people have seen this as a win for themselves.

Your BD Rowa™ Robot was installed last year. How did you first hear about BD Rowa™ and what interested you most about it?

We've been looking at automation for a while, because we've had pretty good growth over the course of the last five, six years. We saw the BD Rowa™ Robot at different conferences like APP, and we have some friends who are also pharmacy owners that have used the product.

We came to a point, that our patients, being an elderly community post COVID, don't want to come outside their house as much because their family wants them to stay at home. If they want to come into the pharmacy, the efficiency needs to be that much better, because we are not a big pharmacy, so space is always a concern, otherwise you wouldn't even think along these lines. But in the end, we decided to do it just purely because we wanted to make sure that we save the patient’s time. 

What other goals did you want to achieve for your pharmacy? What were the main reasons that you decided to invest in a BD Rowa™? 

Another main goal was to support the different efficiency timelines. Now efficiency is not just about how fast the script is being done, that's obviously a key factor, but it's also about how much time the staff now has to spend with the patients because there's no longer any nitty, gritty dispensary management required anymore.

We don't need to do things like stocking the shelves manually, looking for the shelf labels, barcode problems and even things like expiry date checks, what brands are there, having conversations with reps going around in circles. A lot of work has been saved, which has now allowed us to even have our technicians focus on delivering the scripts at a faster rate, so that the pharmacist can focus on the patient with every benefit health advice related conversation.

Can you please take us on a journey and describe your experience working with the BD Rowa™ Team and In-house Architect?

The journey from the start to having the Robot installed has been absolutely brilliant. We spoke to Matt multiple times, and he helped us to understand the different modelling with the BD Rowa™ Robot, which was really helpful because we didn't have a clue. And because of the time that was taken at that period, we felt it wasn't rushed at all. We felt that there was just enough time and enough questions to be answered, so that we felt very confident going into the process. The way it was all done was phenomenal.

Pooja, the BD Rowa™ In-house Architect collaborated with Brandon from our management team to align the BD Rowa™ Concept with the 777 design and brand standards. She designed a few workflow options which assisted us in visualising the BD Rowa™ Solution in our pharmacy. Furthermore, it helped us understand the space constraints and opt in optimal workflow efficiencies.

Basically, the actual BD Rowa™ Team worked very well with our project team to tie in the right times and right date. For the Robot installation Sonya, from the BD Rowa™ Service Team, flew in and was also fantastic to just guide the team through, like the installers, to do that phenomenal job. They were very appreciative of the fact that we still had a pharmacy to run in a small space, so they didn't try to take over. They're very patient if we had to go in and out of different spaces at the most inconvenient times. For us that was a very, very good process to go through. 

Did it take time do get used to it? What were the biggest changes to routines and where did you notice the first improvements?

We could tell straight away this was going to save us a lot of time. It was probably just actually getting used to, what do we do now? It was a very easy transformation. There's always sort of small hiccups here and there when launching certain products and knowing where does what go, but nothing out of the ordinary at all. We grasped it pretty quickly and we don't have a lot of technologically savvy staff here. It is a big testament on how easy it is to use the product that we actually got used to it, very quickly.

What have been the biggest day-to-day changes to your pharmacy since using the BD Rowa™ Robot?

Just going back to the energy that it has created because of a lot of the workflow problems it has solved inside the dispensary, it gives everybody more energy and more time to speak to the patients and the patients are happier. And it does create a bit of theatre because they see that the scripts are coming out so quickly. So many patients come in just to see how the Robot operates. All the kids come in after school to see how it operates. So, with this automation you forget the theatre it creates and how cool it can be for everybody. It's been great.

How do you and your staff feel about your BD Rowa™ Automatic Dispensing Robot today? To what extent is it a fully integrated part of your team?

The BD Rowa has become a huge part of our team and I wish that we had done it earlier, to be honest. We did a naming competition for it, and we had over 400 names submitted. His name is Spencer the Dispenser and we actually call him Spencer. He's been absolutely phenomenal as a part of our team, and it just makes us all happy coming to work knowing that our bread and butter is actually so well looked after by Spencer.

Could you ever imagine running your pharmacy without your BD Rowa™ Automatic Dispensing Robot?

No, at this volume, no way. No chance. It has allowed us to grow without any headache at all.

For Pharmacy owners considering automating with a BD Rowa™ Automatic Dispensing Robot, what would be your recommendations or advice to someone considering the investment?

I would certainly suggest having a chat with the BD Rowa™ Team and going through the actual due diligence in detail. Just because your pharmacy is small or odd shaped, don't think that you can't do anything with it. From our experience the investment we made in it during the last twelve months, has already been paid back to us in spades. We have so many happier patients, happier staff and the whole management inside the pharmacy has been so much easier.