CONTRIBUTOR

Michael Johnsen
Senior Editor, Drug Store News
Featured expert

Doug Hoey, RPh, MBA
Chief Executive Officer National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA)
Editor’s note: This article was originally published on Drug Store News as part of their 2018 coverage of Cardinal Health’s Retail Business Conference.
At Cardinal Health RBC 2018, Doug Hoey, president and CEO of the National Community Pharmacists Association, discussed the “The 7 Habits of Highly Successful Pharmacy Owners,” encouraging attendees to be proactive in the marketplace and their communities. After interviewing dozens of independent pharmacy owners to gain their insight, he shared that pharmacists who embody these seven habits are typically on the forefront of pharmacy innovation.
Habit No. 1: Invest time, money and energy in personnel
Habit No. 2: Get out from behind the counter
Habit No. 3: Know what’s driving the financials
Habit No. 4: Know and understand pharmacy contracts
Habit No. 5: Embrace innovation

NCPA's Doug Hoey discusses the habits of successful pharmacy owners at Cardinal Health RBC 2018. Photo by Alabastro Photography.
More consumers are using technology to optimize their daily lives. For many of the same reasons, pharmacy owners should deploy technology to help drive efficiencies into the business and to lower operating costs. “Your pharmacy management systems are often an underutilized resource,” Hoey said. “There are so many whistles and bells that are good tools in [a typical] pharmacy management system that pharmacy owners don’t know they exist.”
Habit No. 6: Get in sync with med sync
Medication synchronization is one of those crucial technology tools pharmacists can use to improve patient care, create operational efficiencies and mitigate inventory costs. In other words, it does it all. “Most people in this room, if our surveys are right, are doing some form of medication synchronization,” Hoey said. “But as I talked with the most successful pharmacy owners, just doing it and really doing it are two different things. By really doing it, that means you’ve assigned someone to it; you’ve trained someone on it. It is baked into your business.” On average, independents spend more on personnel than the big-box chains, which means those improvements to workflow driven by med sync represent a greater impact to the bottom line.
Habit No. 7: Understand what makes your community tick
This is perhaps one of the greater points of differentiation independent pharmacy owners can exploit. “This is especially important for independents. What is the heartbeat of your community?” Hoey asked. “You know your community better than anyone else, and when you’re doing [habit] No. 2, as far as getting out from behind the counter, you’re going to know your community even more.”
Read the original article here.