BRITISH pharmacy group Well Pharmacy has confirmed plans to roll out so-called "hub-and-spoke" dispensing across its entire network later this year.
Well Pharmacy, formerly known as The Co-operative Pharmacy, is the third largest pharmacy business in the United Kingdom with about 800 branches in total.
The new dispensing model will see prescriptions collected at branches but dispensed centrally, with customers sent a text message to advise when they are ready to pick up again at the branch, according to a report in UK trade publication Chemist and Druggist.
Well Pharmacy ceo John Nuttall was quoted as saying the new system would "relieve a lot of pharmacists' time" allowing them to be "front and centre, facing the customers".
He said the Well Pharmacy dispensing hub was itself a registered pharmacy, meaning the business was "maintaining the importance of bricks and mortar pharmacy".
The hub-and-spoke model has been trialled at six Well pharmacy branches already in the lead-up to a wider roll-out across the entire business during 2017.
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