Tokoroa pharmacy extended
Customer convenience and safety has led to a $30,000 extension for a Tokoroa pharmacy.
Plans to extend the Unichem Tokoroa Pharmacy were made in the middle of 2015 after staff noticed an increase in people wanting their medication to come in sachets, leading to overcrowding in their compliance packaging area.
So an extension was needed to make the work place safe for staff to operate in.
Construction started in late April 2016.
Sachets are individual packets bound together and divided into breakfast, lunch and dinner depending on when the customer needs to take their medication.
The packets can be broken away from the sachet roll if the customer is leaving town for the night, meaning they don’t have to worry about boxes of medication.
Joint owner Derek Tinegy said people preferred sachets because they could handle their medications more easily and logically.
There was also less chance of error and overdose, he said.
Tingey said the the staff have to have a functional space that works physically well with the staff employed who also needs the space to flow better.
The extension would also speed up the process and reduce the waiting times for customers who had regular medication, as sachets would be made ahead of schedule.
Compliance packing manager Holly Clark said having lots of new room was going to be great.
‘‘It’s going to give us the space to expand our customer numbers.’’
Tingey said the extension process has been disruptive towards staff but they’d worked around builders and got their jobs done.