New Travel Clinic 2.0 Package

After 6 months of research, design and development, today we have released a brand new Travel Clinic package. It is far superior to our previous iterations as we feel we have improved on every aspect of the service. The package has been expertly curated by Mike Bereza our lead clinician.



Highlights include:

• 3 hours + of updated HD training videos, with real pharmacy practice examples.
• Online decision making tool to aid you in your clinical decision making.
• More PGDs, including the popular Meningitis B vaccine Bexsero.
• Prescriber phone support, which can send you private prescriptions directly if you are uncertain about specific patients.
• All yours from £300!

These are just some of the exciting new developments. If you are interested in signing up please go to voyagermedical.com or give Mike a call on: 020 7971 7777.

MASTA Pharmacy Travel Clinic

We have been contacted a lot recently about the new MASTA travel clinic sales team targeting community pharmacies to purchase their pharmacy travel clinic solution. We have drilled down into MASTA travel clinic costs and found its pretty expensive....

• £100 online training fee 
• £555 live training fee incl YF £18 per referred traveller ( MASTA take a further 320 consultation fee from the traveller) 
• £35 per month for the PGDs =£420 
• £11 per medical helpline consultation 
• Also you cannot benefit from the Sanofi discount scheme as you have to buy from MASTA wholesale

In practice, based on their minimum prediction: 

If you do a minimum of 4 travellers per week, over the year this is = 4 x £18 x 52 = £3744 

So with the initial costs involved in set up the Total cost of MASTA solution in year one is

£3744 + £100 + £555 + £420 = £4819 

+ extra expense of buying vaccines through MASTA 

+ expensive clinical support.

So pretty dear overall. Our solution for independent pharmacist run travel clinics costs, £2,000:

• You are completely independent but we help you with all of your marketing and online SEO
• You can buy from any supplier, we have negotiated discounts for you
• There are no hidden extra costs for consultations or clinical support

Doctors letter about Travel Clinics

Below is a letter we have drafted for our members to send to their local doctors and medical service. It would be a good idea to customise it and take it personally down to them.

To whom it may concern,

We have just started a new PGD authorised Travel Service at our pharmacy. 

We can now administer most major vaccines including:

• Hep A
• Hep B
• DTP
• Typhoid
• Rabies
• Meningitis
• Cholera
• Japanese Encephalitis

In addition to this we now offer all types of antimalarials (including PoMs), including:

• Malarone
• Malarone Paediatric
• Doxycycline
• Lariam
• Chloroquine
• Paludrine

We hope to work with you to maintain excellent travel health services in our area.

All our appointments are walk-in or booked appointments (patients can call our regular pharmacy number). Our lead pharmacist who is fully trained and PGD authorised works full time so any urgent requirements by patients could be easily referred.

We also have the ability to request bespoke PGDs from our authorising multidisciplinary team, if there are any other areas we could help you with we would be more than willing to help.

Attached is a letter detailing our service to patients who would like more information.

Kindest regards,

Hi,

Our pharmacy has now started a new Travel Service available for your convenience. If you are travelling abroad, why not pop in and ask one of our friendly staff what you wold need. Advice is completely impartial and you wont be charged a consultation fee.

We can now administer most travel vaccines including:

• Hep A
• Hep B
• DTP
• Typhoid
• Rabies
• Meningitis
• Cholera
• Japanese Encephalitis

These vaccines are especially useful if you find yourself travelling outside of Europe to places like Asia, South America or Africa.

In addition to this we now offer all types of antimalarials (including PoMs), including:

• Malarone
• Malarone Paediatric
• Doxycycline
• Lariam
• Chloroquine
• Paludrine

These medicines are extremely useful if you are travelling to any endemic country such as parts of Africa, Asia and South America.

If you have any queries about our service just give us a call on our regular pharmacy number. If you would like to know more about travel advice for specific locations have a look at:

http://www.fitfortravel.nhs.uk/

Hope to see you soon! 

Pharmacy Travel Clinic

How PGDs will revolutionise private health in pharmacies 

Pharmacy services in the UK are changing. As disillusioned pharmacist turn away from ever decreasing NHS reimbursement, pharmacists are looking for new services to generate additional revenue streams. One of the fastest developing sectors are Patient Group Directions (PGDs).


But what is a PGD?
A patient group direction is a document which is authorised by a team of doctors, pharmacists and nurses which allows the supply of specified Prescription Only Medicines. A PGD specifies certain "Groups" of patients who can be given the medicines without a prescription. These protocols exclude the most vulnerable in society from treatment however this is only 1% of the populous. In general, dependent on which PGD is used, 99% of all patients will be included in treatment.
This poses a huge opportunity for pharmacies to specialise in certain fields. For instance patients have always been able to go to tehir pharmacy and purchase products like Regaine (Minoxidil) or Alpecin for hair loss. With the use of PGDs pharmacists can supply oral medicines such as Propecia - which is the most effective adgrogenetic alopecia (male pattern baldness).
The biggest opportunity which has emerged in recent years is patientgroupdirection.com is now offering pharmacists the ability to create their own independent Travel Clinic in their pharmacy. Called the "Travel Core" it authorises the same Travel Health service that you would find in any independent travel clinic or GP surgery. Pharmacists working under the Travel Core PGDs have been report yearly profits of between £10-30K which is a large return for the initial investment.

Pharmacy Travel Clinic

Why is a pharmacy travel clinic so special?

Lots of professions have been encroaching on the Unique Selling Point of pharmacy for quite some time. This may be your local petrol station selling ibuprofen (without asking about asthma or stomach complaints) or doctors dispensing their own prescribed medicines (some would say a conflict of interest).

So how has pharmacy encroached on other professions? Have we started selling petrol from our pharmacies? Or have we started supplying Prescription Only Medicines? There are more obvious areas for expansion then others one major area is the second statement supplying POMs. There are other areas which take advantage of our main USP as pharmacist:

We are the most accessible medical professionals - on every high street.

Noone can take this away from us, but how can we capitalize on this? Just think what do people in this day and age really want... Easy access, convenience and fast service. Lets break down some barriers and give this service to them, instead of letting the patient wait 3 weeks for a doctors travel service why not allow them to talk to a suitably trained pharmacist and access a pharmacy travel clinic asap?

Pharmacy Travel Clinic PGD

Patientgroupdirection.com Pharmacy Travel Clinic PGDs allow you to supply and administer 13 different vaccines, these include:

• Dip/tet/polio (Revaxis - Sanofi)
• Hep A (Epaxel, Avaxim...)
• Hep B (Energix B, Hbvaxpro...)
• Typhoid (Typhim, Vivotif...)
• Rabies (Rabipur)
• Cholera (Dukoral - Oral)
• MMR
• Meningitis (Menveo, Meningitis ACWY)
• Jap Encephalitis (Ixiaro...)
• Malarone
• Doxycycline
• Lariam
• Adrenaline for anaphylaxis.