Shane Desselle, RPh, PhD, FAPhA

Although most organizations have a strategic plan, it is somewhat rare that pharmacy organizations go through all the steps recommended in the business planning process when contemplating a new product or service offering. Ideas for potential new services are often plentiful, but these ideas must be carefully evaluated in order to select the right one and see it to fruition.

These steps are part of the process to produces a business plan. Other steps in the process include defining the business or program, conducting market research and analysis, identifying the target market, conducting competitor analysis, assessing clinical and quality requirements, defining processes and operations, developing a marketing strategy, developing financial projections, identifying an action plan, assessing critical risks and opportunities, and establishing an exit plan.

Tichy et al employed a formal business planning model to develop a transplantation pharmacy service.

 Their planning helped them identify a relative lack of competition in the area but also revealed the significant start-up resources necessary to effectively launch the practice. The evaluation of processes and the market made crystal clear the myriad rules and regulations under which the practice would operate as well as the potential funding sources and funding hurdles they would have to navigate to make the practice a success.

Based on these findings, Tichy et al developed both a financial and clinical justification for the new practice, which took into account the clinical expertise required in addition to the necessary personnel to perform diligent billing activities from payers who might not otherwise been accustomed to providing payment for these pharmacist-led services. The end result was an entirely unique service that was viable from the start, and which grew more clinically relevant and financially solvent with the passing of time.

Effective business planning is paramount not only in the development of new services but in the ongoing evaluation of existing ones, and even for the entire business enterprise. We often plan at least informally, and this is helpful. But more systematic and comprehensive planning are what makes the difference between a service’s long-term success and failure. The initial excitement phase of anything new eventually wanes, and without careful planning, that waning enthusiasm can spell doom. There are plenty of printed and online resources available for pharmacists and managers wanting to more seriously invest the time and effort needed for proper planning.

Business Planning for Pharmacy Programs 

Pharmacy Management: Essentials for All Practice Settings, 5e

is a professor of social and behavioral pharmacy at Touro University in California.

Tichy EM, Pilch NA, Smith LD, et al. Building a business plan to support a transplantation pharmacy practice model. Am J Health Syst Pharm. 2014;71:717-757.

Articles

Ideas for potential new services are often plentiful, but these ideas must be carefully evaluated in order to select the right one and see it to fruition. 

Tip of the Week: Use Business Planning to Ensure Longevity

Harassment and discrimination of any kind is not only unethical and often illegal, but it can also sabotage an organization. An important aspect of workplace law examines discrimination in career mobility and organizational rewards based upon a person’s race or ethnicity and other immutable characteristics. The term “immutable” refers to a characteristic we are born with and essentially cannot change, as opposed to our own actions and behaviors, as those can always be changed.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based upon race, color, ethnicity, national origin, and even accent. An employer may not base a decision on an employee’s foreign accent unless the accent materially interferes with job performance. Pharmacists might vary in their English fluency to some extent, but all have completed an accredited pharmacy degree program with communication skills courses, passed their licensure examination, and were hired by a health care organization. Although some pharmacists who have foreign accents may face challenges, it is unlikely that their accent will materially prevent them from performing their job.

If a pharmacist’s communication with patients and peers should be improved, then this needs to be documented and the pharmacist (or technician) should be given specific direction on how it might be improved. In an article published in 

, expert Soji Akomolafe states that anyone who successfully completes the requirements for becoming a pharmacist and exhibits material competence in their job, including foreign accented speakers, should be accorded the same rights and responsibilities as other pharmacists.

Pharmacy managers can promote a healthy work environment and optimal patient care basing hiring and promotion decisions on specific behaviors that are documented and either praised appropriately or directed for improvement. Managing based on employees’ immutable characteristics rather than behaviors can spell trouble in a number of ways.

The Basics of Employment Law and Workplace Safety and Human Resources Management Functions

Pharmacy Management: Essentials for All Practice Settings

Shane P. Desselle, RPh, PhD, FAPhA, is a professor of social and behavioral pharmacy at Touro University in California

Akomolafe S. The invisible minority: Revisiting the debate foreign-accented speakers upward mobility in the workplace. J Cultural Diversity. 2013;20:7-14.

Racial or ethnic discrimination can appear in many ways, even as discrimination against someone based on their accent.

Tip of the Week: Pharmacy Managers Should Be Aware That Discrimination Can Take Many Forms

Nearly every business organization, including nonprofits, has a strategic plan. A strategic plan helps to ensure that the organization is doing the right things now and in the future. Strategic planning is an overarching type of planning, with operational, business, resource, organizational, and contingency planning subsumed under it.

Strategic planning is often undertaken with the future in mind, usually at least several years in advance. It includes founding or changing the organization’s mission and vision, as well as its overall strategic goals. Furthermore, strategic planning actually helps define the business. For example, a pharmacy can decide whether it’s in the relatively narrow business of selling medications or in the broader business of health and wellness. This will help to define the competition and establish a framework for decision making. An overly narrow strategic plan can result in the business becoming obsolete or losing customers, sometimes rather quickly. The planning must be afforded the proper time and resources for the process itself; otherwise, it simply becomes a waste of time.

Feletto et al. undertook a comprehensive strategic planning approach to developing a framework for cognitive services implementation.

 They approached the planning process with a key value in mind—organizational flexibility—when approaching community pharmacists in a survey of their business practices. They found operational, structural, and strategic flexibility to be critical in building the necessary capacity to construct, implement, and sustain cognitive pharmaceutical services.

 Having capacity is seen as a necessary component to move toward patient-centered care, including financial, logistic, personnel, and even cultural (the right mindset) capacity to expand a business or strategically rethink its mission.

Pharmacy owners and managers, depending on the size of their organization as well as their rank and title, might be involved in some level of strategic planning. Evidence in the literature among health care and all other types of organizations overwhelmingly suggests greater success when formal strategic planning is implemented. All pharmacists, particularly those aspiring to ascend the corporate ladder or become an innovator to develop new services or business models, would do well to learn more about the process.

Strategic Planning in Pharmacy Operations 

, is a professor of social and behavioral pharmacy at Touro University in California.

Feletto E, Wilson LK, Roberts AS, et al. Measuring organizational flexibility in community pharmacy: Building the capacity to implement cognitive pharmaceutical services. Res Social Adm Pharm. 2011;7:27-38.

In addition to changing the organization's mission and vision, strategic planning actually helps define the business. 

Tip of the Week: Use Strategic Planning to Promote Success

Some might be quick to disregard the importance of theory in any discipline, and marketing theory might be among those not given its proper due.

Marketing theory includes the well-known “P’s” of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. There are additional “P’s” to consider, such as people, processes, programs, and performance. Each of these is important to build a successful pharmacy practice, to create profit, and to distinguish yourself with the information you provide to patients.

Marketing theory is particularly useful for defining your business and your competitors. A study by Brooks et al hypothesized that market competition among community pharmacies impacts the decision of individual community pharmacies to provide medication therapy management services (MTMS).

 They found that MTMS are more apt to be supplied at the extremes of community pharmacy concentration (very low and very high). Very low concentrations of pharmacies might force pharmacies to be more innovative in delivering services to patients who otherwise might have to travel far to receive quality health care, whereas a high concentration suggests fierce competition and high population concentrations of patients where pharmacy organizations (as businesses) must do more to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

Taking stock of your target market and the various “P’s” associated with marketing theory will help not only to determine the success of your services and products, but even which of those you can and should offer, not to mention their feasibility, substitutability, and which patients might be willing to pay for them.

Pharmacy Management: Essentials for All Practice Settings, 5e.

, Professor of Social/Behavioral Pharmacy at Touro University California.

Brooks JM, Klepser DG, Urmie JM, et al. Effect of local competition on the willingness of community pharmacies to supply medication therapy management services. J Health Hum Serv Adm. 2007;30:4-27.

Marketing theory is particularly useful for defining your business and your competitors. 