Pharmacy Case Study: Day Lewis Pharmacy
“Pharmacy funding is exceptionally tight, and so it is critical that no money is left behind. The clear information from RWA’s Exemption reports and a process we put in place has saved us over £420,000 in losses from Switching. It has also reduced the workload for our people in the branch around this somewhat onerous task, allowing them to focus on patient care.”
- Jay Patel, Executive Director, Day Lewis Pharmacy
Business Need
Running a pharmacy business is complex. There are many areas where money can leak out of the business when branches are not carefully managed. Claims are covered in some detail in this case study, but Day Lewis Pharmacy’s initial goals were to improve control of; buying, stock management, services, competitive activity, and patient care.
With regard to the claims challenge, the FP34 statements that pharmacy contractors receive each month contain a comprehensive summary of the amounts they have been authorised for payments by the NHS. Although the detailed information that backs up the summary has become more readily available over time, there is still a lot of hidden information, which can result in substantial losses if contractors are not made aware of it.
By using RWA Pharmacy’s business intelligence (BI) solution, Day Lewis identified two significant areas of loss. These were expired EPS prescription items, with an average loss of £817 per pharmacy per annum, and prescription levies losses because the exemptions on the patient record did not match the script. Day Lewis were losing an average of £1,500 per pharmacy each year from these two areas alone.
Solution
The information of expired unclaimed prescriptions is not shown on the FP34. In many cases, the drugs have been issued to the patients, but the pharmacy has not submitted the scripts for claiming. When the script expires, the value of fees and drugs lost to the pharmacy will go unnoticed unless the pharmacy has certain data available. With RWA Pharmacy’s data reporting tool, Day Lewis were able to identify this issue and reduce their losses by over 50%.
Day Lewis also identified the losses due to the difference between the amount of cash collected in the pharmacy, and the number of deductions that the NHS makes on the monthly FP34 for levies that they say the pharmacy should have received cash for. Usually, these losses go undetected because of the accounting treatment that is adopted by the contractor’s auditors. In this process, the cash received is credited as a retail sale, and the levy is treated as a deduction from the NHS Income, but RWA Pharmacy’s Exemption reports make this data available. By putting a more robust procedure in place for each of its pharmacies, Day Lewis has reduced the loss by over 73%.
Background
The Day Lewis Group is an award-winning family business, consisting of one of the largest independent pharmacy chains in the UK and Europe. Founded by the late Kirit Patel MBE and his brother JC Patel in 1975, the Group remains a family-owned entity today, having grown from one pharmacy in Southborough to owning and managing over 300 pharmacies in the UK.
Throughout its dynamic history in community pharmacy and the business arena, Day Lewis has advanced from being a traditional retail pharmacy business, dispensing medication and offering retail products, into a patient-orientated service provider. Following the pharmacy payment cuts, Day Lewis sought to further improve its operational efficiency through investment in Business Intelligence tools. After careful consideration, the Group selected RWA Pharmacy’s secure cloud solution, which provides more flexibility, and much lower cost as an on-premises solution.
“The clarity RWA’s reports give us have been invaluable in these times of pressure on margin and people in our branches. We get more done in less time. This solution has not been a cost to us, it has contributed value well in excess of its cost.”
- Sam Patel, Executive Director, Day Lewis Pharmacy
Get Started with RWA Pharmacy BI Solutions
If you’ve read about the great results that Day Lewis Pharmacy experienced, and would like to begin identifying losses in your pharmacy business, you can get in touch via our Contact page. A member of our team will be in contact within one working day to discuss your options, and how RWA Pharmacy can use data-driven insights to take your pharmacy operations to the next level.
To learn more about how RWA Pharmacy supports businesses in streamlining their operations and boosting their profits, we have plenty more Pharmacy BI Case Studies from the industry to browse. Or, to learn more about our industry-tailored BI software, you can visit Our Solutions for a full list of the BI solutions that we offer, including RX Decision Support and Local Insights, to help you target your unique customer base.
Results
Following our partnership with Day Lewis Pharmacies, our pharmacy BI solution helped them to:
- Recoup £650,000 in potential losses
- Reduce expired UPS prescription items by 50%
- Reduce switching loss by 73%
- Recover £420,000 in exemption losses
These results and the boost to the retail pharmacy group’s bottom line allowed them to reinvest profits which would otherwise have been lost in preventable yet hard to identify ways.
Our BI solutions make areas of loss clear to pharmacy groups, with actionable insights which could revolutionise your retail pharmacy business.
Benefits
Operational benefits include:
- All our main KPIs are summarised for all our branches into one dashboard so that exceptions can be identified in real time.
- The detailed information is available to manage by exceptions.
- Pre-packaged reports are automatically delivered to the level of management that needs them when they need them.
Just two examples of financial benefits come from:
- The number of EPS prescription items that had expired was reduced by 50%.
- The business reduced its levy switches by 73%.