Jeroen van de Pol

168 Chapter 6 Opportunity Opportunity as part of the COM-Bmodel entails factors that make certain behavior possible. For the community pharmacy profession, three topics are relevant: the availability of time, the current reimbursement model, and alternative business models separating CPS and dispensing. Available time Overall, based on the results presented in chapter 2.1 and 2.2, community pharmacists have a diverse and demanding set of daily recurring activities that consume much of their available time and may hamper them from focusing on the provision of CPS. Previous studies have also indicated that the amount of available time is one of the most-mentioned constraints when implementing and providing CPS [19, 45-47]. However, not spending time on activities other than CPS is impossible, as certain managerial activities or activities related to quality assurance are core to the community pharmacy profession and are preconditions for an efficient dispensing process and CPS provision. Similarly, GPs and medical consultants are also not capable of spending all their available time in direct patient contact, as activities such as patient administration and certain managerial activities are also necessary in daily practice [48]. Compared to physicians, however, community pharmacists spend a larger amount of time on activities without direct patient contact, such as the dispensing process and managerial activities (see chapter 2.1 and 2.2). The large proportion of time spent on the dispensing process could be a sign of understaffing [49] and, consequently, of the need for community pharmacists to partake in the dispensing process. Thus, pharmacy technicians are crucial to enabling community pharmacists to focus on CPS [47, 50]. Understaffing has multiple caused. On the one hand, community pharmacists increasingly lack sufficient reimbursement to hire additional staff [51, 52], and on the other hand, the pharmacy technicians’ role lacks attractiveness on the job market. Therefore, community pharmacy professional bodies need to focus on ensuring sufficient pharmacy technicians for staffing in community pharmacies. This can be pursued by facilitating sufficient education and promoting the attractiveness of the profession of pharmacy technicians regarding job profiles, career possibilities, and remuneration. When community pharmacists actively take part in the dispensing process (whether forced by personnel shortages or by their own choice), they should use these moments to be visible to patients and to come into contact with patients working on the pharmacist-patient relationship, so patients can view the community pharmacist as easily accessible. Staying in the back-office and working on logistical- or administrative tasks is not preferred.