Three Important Numbers Behind Local Pharmacies
Just how important are your local pharmacies? Take a look at the numbers below and you’ll see just how much local pharmacies contribute to the success of a community and provide valuable resources for residents:
$10 billion: The estimated amount of money that senior citizens spend on prescription medications each year — and this number is constantly going up as prescription drugs continue getting more expensive and as retirement plans stop including medical coverage. Many senior citizens rely quite a bit on prescription coupons and rebates to purchase essential medications, but without retail pharmacy POS systems, sometimes pharmacies aren’t able to process all of these coupons.
271.4 million: The amount of prescriptions written out in one year by doctors and nurses during emergency room visits — the amount of prescriptions written in outpatient visits and doctors offices brings this number up even higher. It’s easy to forget that hospitals rely on pharmacy software to keep track of these medications and that this software is just as essential in hospital ERs as it is in independent freestanding pharmacies. Although hospital staff can monitor medication consumption more closely when a patient is in the hospital than when a patient is at home, pharmacy software is still essential for keeping track of things like dosages and side effects.
Eight: The average amount of prescriptions that one American senior citizen (over age 65) generally takes — although many elderly patients take many more medications. Considering that the Baby Boomer generation is starting to reach their 60s and is bringing up the population of senior citizens, and researchers estimate that they’ll make up about 20% of the population by 2030, up from 13% in 2010, it’s clear that pharmacies are going to be serving more customers and keeping track of more medications in the coming decade.
Find more on this here. More can be found here.
