News & Events
Chidi Okoro: Transforming D & M Pharmacy To Deliver Primary Care Services.
- June 22, 2023
- Posted by: Admin
- Category: Course
As healthcare practice and business continue to undergo changes and challenges across the world, much focus has been committed to how community pharmacy can be transformed or remodelled beyond its traditional role in dispensing drugs to key into primary care delivery.
Chidi Okoro, unarguably, is one of his generation’s finest when it comes to strategic thinking, corporate leadership, retail management and FMCG operations in Africa.
I had a chat with him at his Surulere office as he took me round different sections of his pharmacy which actually delivers more value than you’d expect from a traditional retail pharmacy.
The meaning of D & M
“D & M actually is an abbreviation for Drugs & Medicaments”, says Chidi Okoro as he explains the meaning of D & M pharmacy.
“My vision is to turn every branch of D & M Pharmacy into primary card centre”, he asserts further.
It is rare to find someone that belongs to the older generation actively immersed in envisioning a community pharmacy as a primary care hub.
How it all started
“How did you start a retail pharmacy business from being a phenomenal General Manager of GSK in Nigeria?”, I asked out of curiosity.
“Well, I knew someone who wanted to sell his pharmacy. So, I decided to buy. That’s how we started in 2013.”
Today, are over 20 branches of D & M pharmacy across Lagos, Anambra, and Ekiti State just to mention a few since he started out in 2013. This makes the retail healthcare company one of the largest chains in West Africa after the likes of Healthplus and Medplus.
Impressive execution of continuum of care
Beyond multibranching as a strategy, I wanted to understand Chidi’s play playbook when it comes to executing the continuum of care for patients at D & M Pharmacy.”
How do you initiate the patient journey?”, I asked.”
“When a patient comes in to make a complaint at the pharmacy, we book an appointment with an online doctor within our network for cases the pharmacist considers as needing physician attention”.
The beautiful thing about their system is that the patient does not even have to wait at the pharmacy to talk to the doctor.”
“Yeah, the patient can speak with the physician at home if they like. Then the doctor sends the prescription to us on our digital health platform.”
How the pharmacist works in the primary care team
The D & M pharmacist checks the prescription for accuracy and potential drug-drug interaction and then dispenses to the patient.
Sometimes, the doctor recommends care plans that includes at-home nursing care and drug administration which is taken care of by a registered nurse practitioner staff.
Point of Care Testing and the Future of Pharmacy-based Primary Care
Chidi Okoro’s commitment to evidence-based healthcare and antimicrobial stewardship is both noteworthy and commendable.
D & M Pharmacy is equipped with a clean, cosy point of care lab that caters to essential diagnostics services such as Hepatitis B, Retroviral Screening, Malaria etc.
“You see, the era of indiscriminate prescription of antibiotics has to end. And we really have to aggressively pursue the means and strategy to change or influence the behaviour of patients as well”, he added.
Abuse of antibiotics is rife in Nigeria because diagnostic tests are not readily available at the point of care. So, a physician for example, might recommend antibiotics simply based on patient complaints. Also, patients normally walk into a chemist or pharmacy to demand for antibiotics.
Rapid testing at the point of care will also reverse the ugly trend of diagnostic errors in Nigeria. According to the Primary Care Performance Initiative funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, diagnostic accuracy in Nigeria is just 36.4%. It means less than 4 out of 10 patients in contact with healthcare providers are correctly diagnosed.
Chidi Okoro’s D & M Pharmacy has shown that it is possible to advance healthcare delivery in Nigeria one pharmacy at a time.
More about Chidi Okoro.
Chidi Okoro is a retail don and think-tank at the Lagos Business School.
He is also a faculty at the Global Masters Institute’s Certification Programme In Point of Care Testing.
www.globalmastersinstitute.com/blog