All prescription items are not the same. Even when we remove reimbursement and the cost of the dispensed items, some items will be more profitable to dispense than others. Being able to segment prescriptions into groups will help us understand this.

The first way we could segment our prescriptions is in relation to the channel they come through. These channels might include

• Repeat prescriptions

• Acute (walk-in) prescriptions (for nominated patients and new patients)

• Prescriptions for homes

• Methadone prescriptions

• Prescriptions you deliver

A further category that will overlap with some of the other categories would be prescriptions dispensed into MDS. 

The income from each of these channels will be the item multiplied by the single activity fee (currently £1.27).

We can identify the costs of dispensing prescriptions in each of these channels. This would include the staff cost in dispensing and checking the dispensed prescriptions, consumables and delivery costs. A version of net profit that excludes shared costs can then be calculated for each channel and will tell you the contribution each makes to the overall profit of the pharmacy. This level of management information identifies If any channels are not contributing net profit at this level. If they don’t you need to have a clear rationale about continuing with them.

A second approach to segmenting prescriptions would be to look at their source. Which practices or clinics do you receive prescriptions from. You can compare this information with the total number of items dispensed for each local surgery and calculate the percentage of items dispensed for each practice. 

The market for prescription items is relatively fixed; you can do nothing to increase the number of prescriptions written. Your only option for increasing dispensing business is to increase market share. If you are the nearest pharmacy to a surgery, you may expect to dispense the majority of their prescriptions. If you don’t, creating this management information will identify this and prompt you to ask why. This allows you to create targets with which you can measure performance.

Finally you can segment your prescription data by demographic data. The most useful will probably be by age and conditions. Local population health data with provide you will age and morbidity profiles against which you can compare your data. Again, if your data profile does not match that of your community, you should ask yourself why and set targets to manage performance.

The majority of the locality data mentioned is in the public domain and can found on the internet. The information about your pharmacy is held in your PMR system. Accessing this data and forming it into management data is a leadership task that creates a more detailed level of understanding of business performance.