Community Pharmacy’s Stellar Productivity Performance
Recent research into Australian community pharmacy's productivity gains has again shown the performance to be outstanding.
As previously reported in the AJP, the computerisation of the dispensing process from 1985 to 1995 reduced the dispensing time from 368 seconds without a computer to 256 seconds with a computer. That is a 30.4 % increase in 10 years or 3.04% a year.
This is an outstanding result compared to the 1.1% 40 year average productivity gain for the Australian economy.
The Productivity Commission in its report to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, September 2009, when commenting on the Australian economy's productivity gains said
“Over the last 4 decades, annual multifactor productivity (MFP) growth in the market sector of Australia's economy has averaged 1.1 per cent. This places Australia just below the middle of OECD rankings over the period. ... Australia's rate of MFP growth has been quite varied over time. Of particular note is the poor performance in the early 1980s”.
That is at the very time pharmacy was computerising.
The productivity commission went on to report that “with the first wave of reforms in the mid 1980s and the adoption of the National Competition Policy in the mid 1990s Australia's annual MFP growth rose rapidly and during the 1993-94 to 1998-99 productivity cycle averaged an extraordinary 2.3%. Australia's ranking rose from 12th to 2nd amongst key OECD countries”.
If the productivity commission described the 2.3% as extra-ordinary, what about community pharmacy's 3.04%?
I remember the day well in Fred Taylor's Pharmacy in Turramurra when we had to stay back to 8.30pm to finish the day's prescriptions. That day's total was 79 prescriptions.
Today I am a partner in pharmacies that dispense 400 and 500 prescriptions day.
These experiences prompted me to research the increase in the number of prescriptions dispensed in the Guild Digest average pharmacy and how this number had varied over the years. The results of the research are provided in Graph 1 and they show the dramatic increase in the number of prescriptions dispensed per pharmacy per year. In 1981 the number was 23,554. In 2009 54,213. That is an increase of 30,659 over 28 years.
Graph 1 Annual Average Prescription Numbers Australian Community Pharmacy 1981 to 2009
That is a productivity gain of 4.6% per year!
If the Productivity Commission described 2.3% as extra-ordinary there is no word that can accurately describe the 4.6%.
The Guild Digest not only provides data on the average number of prescription per pharmacy. It also provides data from which can be calculated the amount of pharmacist time for each prescription.
The Guild Digest data is that in Table 6, where the average number of prescriptions per year is detailed and Table 18 where the average number of pharmacist hours worked are detailed.
Please note the pharmacist hours in the Guild Digest apply to all the tasks the pharmacist has to carry out and not just prescription work.
The number of pharmacist minutes for each prescription in 1987 was 7.4 and in 2009 as 4.8. The movement from 1985 to 2009 is illustrated in Graph 2.
Graph 2 Average Minutes of Pharmacist Time Per Prescription 1985 to 2009
The time spent by the pharmacist per prescription decreased from 7.4 in 1987 to 4.8 in 2009. That is a decrease of 2.6 minutes in 22 years or 1.6% a year.
Whilst this productivity gain is not as high as the 4.6% in the number of prescriptions per pharmacy, the 1.6% is higher than the 1.1% long term average of the Australian Economy.
The above information was published in the Australian Journal of Pharmacy, Vol 92, November 2011, p70
The two graphs are drawn from the following data table.
