Drive-through pharmacy

From Mr B. S. Shoker, MRPharmS

I believe that a drive-through pharmacy is a poor idea for pharmacy and patients. Patients are still waiting in a queue whether they are inside or outside. The presence of a window may lead to communication barriers.

Unless patients are disabled, unwell or of limited mobility, it simply comes to convenience of staying seated in a vehicle, which limits the availability of information the pharmacist can provide at the point of dispensing, not to mention other services on offer in the pharmacy, such as medicines use reviews, blood pressure checks or diabetes testing.

B. Shoker

Birmingham

From Mr G. L. Chahal, MRPharmS

Although Boots is to be congratulated for entering the exciting format of the drive-through pharmacy market (PJ, 30 August 2008, p231), the first drive-through pharmacy in the UK was opened on 15 December 1995 by my wife and I, trading as Duran Drive-Thru Pharmacy in Norton Canes, Staffordshire (PJ, 16 December 1995, p830). A second drive-through pharmacy was opened on 8 December 2000 (PJ, 3 June 2000, p839).

Both ventures received extensive European wide media coverage. In 1995, the coverage was featured on the BBC, ITV, the main newspapers and the pharmaceutical press. Indeed, the PJ covered it extremely well. Even Which? magazine praised the venture.

Many independent pharmacists and corporate companies, such as Boots, Moss and Asda sent delegations to our patented “drive-thru” format.

From Europe, the vice-president of Finland’s largest chain also came to study the venture (PJ, 6 July 1996, p7). The German Pharmaceutical Society tried to get its government to allow drive-through pharmacies in its country, citing our successful example.

We have won numerous awards, including the Switch Pharmacy Retailer of the Year Award in 1996. The Royal Pharmaceutical Society has featured this pharmacy in a number of campaigns.

It is important to remember that this pioneering work was not carried out by a large corporate organisation but by a small independent company.

In 2005, we were ready to expand nationally. However, in view of the introduction of category M, it was decided that for a small company, it would be risky to fund the drive-through format from a small level to a national one until the full impact of category M was known. We retained the Duran “drive-thru” patent but the Co-op group bought the businesses in February 2006.

The PJ reported that some US research has suggested that dispensing medicines through a window in drive-through pharmacies contributes to errors because of reduced efficiency, which may cause delays in dispensing (PJ, 20 September 2008, p318).

Although no system can be said to be infallible, within our 12-year operation, the safety record was impeccable. To our knowledge, we neither experienced nor logged even one error as a direct result of the drive-through booth service. That is because our drive-through pharmacies were well planned, well resourced and well implemented.

We researched in depth the US model carefully and concluded that it was unlikely to work for the UK consumer market. Over a five-year period we developed our own model. In 1989, based on the Nuffield report, we designed and built a pharmacy in Cannock, Staffordshire, but soon realised the need to address customers who are car-bound, such as mothers with children, carers and relatives caring for the elderly, and the disabled.

After much contemplation and analysis, we realised that either we needed to bring the dispensary near the car or the car near the dispensary. Therefore, the idea of a drive-through pharmacy was born.

For the British healthcare consumer, we developed the one- booth model rather than two booths because the two-booth model would create more operational stress for staff, compromise efficiency and increase clinical governance issues.

We designed and patented our booth to act like a consultation room. It is slightly vertically recessed to attain patient eye level and, to enhance patient confidentiality, acoustically modified so the sound remains within the confines of the booth and the car.

Based on media accounts, it appears that Boots have taken an old McDonalds site and opened it up because it happened to possess two booths. If their format if sufficiently resourced, they should be successful and have the potential for further expansion.

However, if the venture is insufficiently resourced, they may end up giving this exciting format a bad image.

Gurd Chahal

Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands