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Profile
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8/17/2011
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Dedicated pharmacy development
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Amarjit Singh Gill has spent 30 years at Gill Pharmacy in Southall, from pre-registration student to owner, and is still working as hard as ever to create his ideal pharmacy. Neil Trainis talks to the Pharmacy Business Health & Beauty Retailer Award winner...
“Our pharmacy is designed for the future. I'm very proud of it,” Amarjit Singh Gill exclaims with the type of panache and confidence demanded of all pharmacists as they head into a period of unprecedented change for their profession. The Pharmacy Business health and beauty retailer of the year award winner oozes self-assurance but his poise has a perspective. He bears the realisation that improvement is a non-negotiable as pharmacy heads into uncharted territory. “We have to keep up with the big boys (the multiples) and keep on improving. We've got to do that, not just to keep our customers, but to earn the right to provide services in the NHS.”
His pride at the progress made by Gill Pharmacy, located in Southall and embedded within a predominantly south Asian population which has afforded the district the moniker “little India,” is reflected in numerous innovations and redevelopments.
A newly designed dispensary instantly catches the eye when you walk through the door, an expansion which houses multiple computer labelling stations which have, in Amarjit's words, helped “increase our prescription level by 20%.” Richard King, Pharmacy Business's roving judge, observed on his visit to the pharmacy last year that it provides “a fast and efficient service to patients” and “has reduced patient waiting times.”
Amarjit finds pride hard to resist once more. “There are no long waiting times. We have five terminals all operating from the same system. The customers are really impressed,” he says. “The refit has attracted a lot of new customers. It's a pleasure coming to work. Before the refit, it was good. It was OK. But now, new people like coming in. It's open, it's airy, it's not cluttered. Everything is on display properly. It now has a professional image.
“The cleanliness of the pharmacy and friendliness of the staff here are what stand out. If the customers want something, we will do our best to get it for them. It took us a year to think it through and get together to draw up the plans. The customers cannot believe the transformation. It should be in the West End of London, not the suburbs of London.”
The current Gill Pharmacy is not quite quixotic but it has come a long way from the basic pharmacy where Amarjit studied his pre-registration exams as a budding pharmacist. He is part of the furniture having spent 30 years there, from student to pharmacy manager to pharmacy owner. “I run (the pharmacy) with my brother, Raghbir. He does all the paperwork which I don't like doing. He's the silent one. He writes all the cheques,” he muses with a chuckle.
Consultation
The resources Gill Pharmacy now boast is reason to smile. There are three consultation rooms and a plethora of clinical services on offer, including smoking cessation, emergency contraception, blood pressure monitoring, cholesterol monitoring, diabetes monitoring, allergy testing, flu vaccination, moors, asthma clinic, eye health and health and beauty services.
The eight full-time staff, whose diversity in language caters seamlessly for Southall's mixed race community, have their hands full but that versatility, along with the pharmacy's longer opening hours, allows them to provide for people who would, ordinarily, be hard-to-reach. “We are multi-lingual and we have to be,” Amarjit volunteers. “We speak Punjabi, Urdu, Somalian, English, to name a few. That's a big plus in this area. We have a large ethnic clientèle here.”
One of the pharmacy's biggest enticers is its perfumery and cosmetics section, which play out to the backdrop of, in King's words, “an imposing green granite shop front... a high quality design perfect for the needs of top performing, high margin perfume, cosmetic and skincare brands.” Amarjit maintains that intelligent perspective when tempted to talk about his pharmacy's best feature. “We stock a large range of perfumes. We are known for our perfumery section but it's always been like that,” he says matter-of-factly.
He limits self praise to cultivate a hunger for future improvement. There is a desire, and space within the pharmacy, to install a robotic dispensary but only once “prices come down.” Amarjit envisages the contraption wherring away to the intrigue of customers and further benefit to an already efficient business. “Everybody's invested in one of these robots and we've made room for it,” he says. “It's very expensive which is why we didn't go for it in the first place but in years to come, we could install one.”
A website giving customers the chance to sample Gill Pharmacy's services and products online is in construction. “We are looking into a website. In a couple more months it will be up and running. The initial cost is somewhere between £300 and £400 and after that we can press ahead with it.” Ambition is not supplanted by anxiety over community pharmacy's prospects as the Health and Social Care Bill begins its journey back from the committee stage of the House of Commons. Amarjit is characteristically confident that pharmacy will hurdle all of the challenges that have been shoved in front of it. “We are confident we can engage with GPs,” he says. “We've spoken up at long last (with Ash Soni's presence on the NHS Future Forum). They're going to have to involve us. We will get a say. Otherwise it won't work.”
An NHS with a marginalised pharmacy is an unthinkable scenario. “We are the last checkpoint between the patient and everything else,” he says. “We are the last contact with the patient. We know the patients, we know the local population and we give the GPs information about what patients want.”
Amarjit does not lack much but sympathy for a beleaguered Secretary of State for Health, Andrew Lansley, is in short supply. “He has botched the whole thing,” he suggests, in reference to now watered down plans to introduce competition to service provisioning and hand GPs budgetary and commissioning control of an £80 billion NHS war chest. “I think maybe he should go. We weren't consulted properly in the first place. A lot of damage has been done and it's too late to take all that back.”
“Pharmacists see many more patients than GPs. Patients tend to be more relaxed when they come to the pharmacy than when they go to a GP's surgery. They are more relaxed and less tense and that means they speak more.” Especially when patients set foot through the doors of Gill Pharmacy.
“Pharmacists see many more patients than GPs. Patients tend to be more relaxed when they come to the pharmacy than when they go to a GP's surgery” Amarjit Singh Gill
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