Optimizing your community pharmacy with lean management

In today’s healthcare landscape, community pharmacies must improve efficiency, reduce waste, and enhance patient care to thrive. Lean management is an effective way to achieve these goals. While some believe lean management is about reducing labour, it’s actually about optimizing processes, making the best use of your team’s skills and creating more value for your patients.Lean management focuses on minimizing waste and maximizing value in every part of your pharmacy. Waste could be anything that doesn’t directly contribute to patient care or smooth operations, such as unnecessary tasks, delays, or inefficient workflows.A few key principles of lean management include:Value Identification: Understand what your patients value most and ensure every process contributes to delivering that value.Value Stream Mapping: Analyze every step in your workflow to identify and eliminate waste.Flow: Ensure processes run smoothly, without interruptions, delays or bottlenecks.Pull: Respond to patient needs rather than pushing services that aren’t required.Continuous Improvement: An ongoing process of refinement and enhancement.A common myth is that lean management involves cutting jobs. Rather, it should be about ensuring that everyone works at their highest skill level. For example, pharmacists should focus on clinical tasks and patient consultations, not on administrative duties. Similarly, pharmacy owners should be growing the business, not stocking shelves or filling vials; tasks that can be managed by a student or part-time assistant. The opportunity cost of having highly skilled professionals perform these tasks is too high, and your time is better spent working on your business rather than in it.Value stream mapping is a crucial step in lean management that involves breaking down your pharmacy’s processes into individual steps to identify areas where waste can be eliminated and efficiency improved. Here is a step-by-step breakdown:Identify the process: Start by selecting a process to map, such as the prescription dispensing process or inventory management.List all steps: Break down the process into all the steps involved, from start to finish.Assign roles: Note which team member is responsible for each step. This helps you see if tasks are handled by the appropriate skill level.Identify waste and bottlenecks: Spot any steps that add unnecessary time or effort. A bottleneck is a step that slows down the entire process.Develop and implement a plan: Create a plan to streamline the process (e.g., reassign tasks, implement automation, remove unnecessary steps).Monitor and improve: Regularly monitor the results and make ongoing adjustments as needed. Lean management is about continuous improvement.By delegating appropriately, you can improve efficiency, reduce costs, and ensure that your patients receive the highest level of care. For pharmacy owners, this means stepping back from day-to-day tasks that can be delegated. Your time is better spent on strategic planning, business growth and patient engagement. Hiring support staff to handle these tasks can be a wise investment, allowing you to focus on activities that directly contribute to the success of your pharmacy.Embracing lean management in your pharmacy is about working smarter. By optimizing workflows, using your team’s skills effectively, and continuously improving processes, you can create a more prosperous and successful pharmacy. Amy Oliver is an experienced pharmacy executive and the founder of Amy Oliver + Co (www.amyoliver.ca) and host of The Healthy Business Series and The Pocket Society. She offers advisory services, certified professional coaching, and business training to practice owners looking to master their strategy, management, and leadership on their journey to excellence.