Understanding our current performance with hard measures is important because this will allow us to evaluate the impact of the strategies and plans we implement. Using a greater level of detail to describe this performance will provide us with better management information to inform our plans. So what performance measures should we look at?

Prescription numbers

Often the only number we look at in terms of prescription numbers is the top-line number: how many items we dispense per week or month. We can make this more informative by breaking the numbers down further: walk-in items, collected items, EPS items, repeat dispensing items and nursing home items.

Services

This can be broken down simply into NHS services and private services. This information can be made more useful by breaking these down into each individual service and understanding both the numbers of services provided and the income derived from each service.

Sales

Top-line sales figures are often the only measures used, but this can be made more informative when broken down. For many pharmacies this figure could be broken down into medicines, other healthcare (for example vitamins, first aid, etc) and general retail. More complicated retail businesses might consider breaking this down further. Medicines can be broken down into P and GSL. Other healthcare and general retail could be broken down into separate sections. An EPOS system will be able to provide this level of data quite easily.

Costs

Monthly and annual accounts will provide a breakdown of costs lodged against specific categories. While an aggressive focus on costs can come with a detrimental impact on sales, it is important that we ensure costs are reasonable and in line with expectations.

Other measures

There are a number of other measures that could be used to understand the current performance of the business. These might include customer numbers, patient numbers, basket size and stock holding.