History
Since its inception in 2002 HIP has grown from one store in Sydney to thirty stores across Australia, predominantly in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria.
Sydney pharmacist Ken Lee founded the Health Information Pharmacy model in his Castle Hill pharmacy in 2002. The pharmacy model now used by all HIP stores across the country was first developed by Ken and his wife Julia in close collaboration with Ken’s business coach Greg Albert.
The original reason for Ken contacting Greg was that he faced a lot of the same problems faced by other small and medium sized businesses, as well as a number of problems emerging in the pharmacy industry.
He and his wife were together working 130 hours a week in the pharmacy and Ken’s main concern was to reduce this workload. However they also faced increasing competition from discount pharmacies and an increase in legislative compliance, and together these challenges prompted Ken to look outside pharmacy for a solution.
The HIP pharmacy model
Greg helped Ken meet these challenges and together they developed a pharmacy model based on:
- Business systemisation
- Incentive Management
- Cost effective marketing
- Effective branding and positioning
- Business mentoring
Within the year Ken had been able to implement all of these programs into his pharmacy in Castle Hill and as a consequence was able to reduce his personal workload and focus on working on the business rather than in the business.
The result was a much healthier pharmacist and a much healthier pharmacy!
Reducing medication problems
At about the same time Ken had read a report in the media on the worrying number of Australians admitted to hospital due to prescription errors – half a million people a year (Australian Council for Safety and Quality in Healthcare) and realised that pharmacy had no more important role than to decrease this alarming statistic.
This led to a completely new focus on health information in the Castle Hill pharmacy, the introduction of a dispensing procedure called Chemconsult® aimed at picking up medication errors that is unique to HIP.
The Health Information Pharmacy concept was born.
The business model
As well as providing a unique high service business model to HIP store owners, the model helps the owner of an HIP store implement the core HIP systems by providing a comprehensive systems manual (incroporating over 100 unique systems), a three-day residential induction course, backed up by a business development coach – a combination that Ken used so successfully to drive his own pharmacy success.
The implementation of the model in each individual store is facilitated by the business coach and consists of a number of team training sessions based around HIP DVD/video material.
HIP business development coaches are not specialist pharmacy coaches, they are trained to help businesses generally overcome the issues that they face – and a lot of these issues are common across all business types.
However all HIP coaches are fully trained in the HIP philosophies and systems and are there to help members first implement the systems and then address whatever specific business outcomes are desired.
Pharmacies that have implemented the HIP model successfully have reported significant improvements in business, and so far two pharmacies in the group have been awarded the prestigious QCPP* Pharmacy of the Year award at state level (Castle Hill NSW/ACT 2003, Lindisfarne TAS 2005).
The group currently has 30 stores across Australia.
*Quality Care Pharmacy Program
