Dear Member,

April is approaching and we are in the process of sending out our yearly membership fee invoices. As always, please ensure to promptly pay our membership fee invoice by its due date.

As you may be aware the cost of our membership fees to you has not increased over the last 10 years, and again we will absorb the ever-increasing costs of energy, office maintenance, staff and rents and continue to keep the membership invoice at £400+VAT.

Our service offering centres around four pillars of support:

    1. Professional and regulatory support

    2. Business and commercial development and support

    3. NHS & Private Clinical services and training

    4. Networking and connectivity (inc. social events)

1. Professional and regulatory support

Our uniqueness comes from our close one-to-one support through a team of in house pharmacy experts and our connectivity achieved through our various WhatsApp groups and webinars. We work hard to simplify most of the complex information that comes out, into smaller regular bite-size chunks – this could be around Pharmacy Quality Scheme, GPhC mock inspections, regulatory compliance or new changes to service requirements.

2. Business and commercial development and support

This year we have been working closely with a number of new suppliers including pharmacy patient apps, cascade software and private clinical service providers. 

Maintaining costs such as membership fees and subsidised training can only be achieved if all our members are willing to engage with all our nominated suppliers – particularly our short liners.

A number of members have been swayed by competitor cascade suppliers, which makes it difficult for Pharma Plus to achieve a collective group spend targets with our current suppliers and as a knock on, prevents us negotiating better prices and services for the future. This situation unabated will effect the viability of Pharmaplus.

We have tried to counter this situation and are going to introduce our own competitively priced drug cascade platform very shortly, in partnership with a reputable and established supplier. If you want to utilise this type of platform then please support us, and those with competitors should also now help by coming onboard with us. Together with our Monthly Tender Service we would be able to cater for all your buying needs.

Our central invoicing service to members is growing with more members taking advantage of this service, however, we have seen some members take advantage of our more than generous credit terms, members are reminded to please adhere to these terms.

3. NHS & Private Clinical services and training

A key area of uptake starting to develop for Pharma Plus members has been the introduction of our suite of Private Clinical services with many signing up to services like the Independent Prescribing support (inc. finding a Designated Medical Practitioner), ear microsuction, travel clinic and our walk-in clinic which will start to give them new revenue generating opportunities. Some of these new services are unique to PharmaPlus. We are here to help you generate extra profitable revenue.

4. Networking and connectivity (inc. social events)

We have maintained regular connectivity with members via phone calls, our virtual webinars and Whatsapp groups throughout the pandemic. We have also hosted a networking social evening late last year. And we encourage members to join us in the upcoming networking and social events this summer in a bid to create further productive outcomes.

Our viability and support for future

As a support organisation, we can only be successful when working as a collective group. The support we give you is focused on the pharmacy environment we are in and importantly are likely to be in the future.

We believe we have a unique set up with more members starting to join in our vision – however if group compliance becomes compromised, and our sources of supplier support decrease any further, delivery of this vision will inevitably become challenging very soon.

We urge our members to support us in supporting you for the current and future challenges.

Kind regards,

PharmaPlus