Setting up a medical centre

ohallod

Hi All,
A colleague and I are interested in setting up a pharmacy aligned with a GP surgery in either Kerry or Offaly. We have both worked in community pharmacy for ten years and have careful plans about how to keep our business viable and profitable. Our main concern is that we would like to open in conjunction with a GP in order to provide footfall to one another.
As we don’t personally know of any GP’s who would like to start up on their own, I’m looking for advice on how to get in contact with someone who might be interested.
Is there some sort of GP forum that I can browse or some other means?
Thanks!

L.Jenkins

Instead of looking for a GP to go out on their own, why not set up along side someone who is already established?

EndaHonesty

Look for a GP paying high rent for a premises, or in a premises that requires investment and offer them attractive terms to move into your premises.

Use them like an anchor tenant.

pedroeibar1

You could try an advert in the IMJ or the IMT to see what the response would be like.

How much money do you have? What start-up costs have you factored in?
It’s not a very symbiotic relationship, it’s more parasitic because the footfall mainly goes in one direction – to the pharmacy, although there would be a few referrals for prescription drugs. On paper your idea is a model that works, (and it has already been +/- done in Ireland) but in practice I foresee more than a few difficulties for several reasons particularly when you insist on Kerry and Offaly, largely rural counties. For example there is an acute shortage of/difficulty in finding GPs willing to work in the more rural towns/villages, particularly in Kerry. No young GPs want to move to a rural area with its limits on income and being tied to the practice 24/7. I accept that locum-like services such as SouthDoc or its equivalent are a help, but if you know Kerry & NW Cork you will know what was in the medical news for the last year.

The first hurdle is to find a doc willing to move to ‘bogland’ (and quality of life there does not swing it), second you have to fund not just a retail outlet but also a med centre, thirdly you need to lure the local population away from an existing GP & pharmacy whose owners/families have been in the local community for decades and usually have strong links. Fourthly, ‘discounting’ on product pricing is not possible, etc., etc.

The pharmacy could be managed as any typical start-up business but TBH I cannot see your plan working as you believe in a rural area; to have a chance of success you’d need a big town or better again a city. In the event that Irish doctors would be allowed sell prescription drugs (as they are in most US states), the model would die.

antoinolachtnai

GPs are perfectly entitled to sell prescription drugs to their patients as it is.

What the OP is describing is basically a real estate play of developing a medical centre.

There are lots of practical and professional reasons why a pharmacist and a GP will find it difficult to be in business together. Both being tenants in a combined medical venue makes more sense.

Developing a centre like that, I imagine, really depends on the support and interest of the HSE in the area.

I have a feeling (but I have not checked) that the population is declining in the counties you mention. If the population is declining, it does not make sense to open a ‘new’ GP practice or pharmacy. The sensible thing is to acquire/combine an existing one somehow.

pedroeibar1

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

GPs are perfectly entitled to sell prescription drugs to their patients as it is.

What the OP is describing is basically a real estate play of developing a medical centre.

There are lots of practical and professional reasons why a pharmacist and a GP will find it difficult to be in business together. Both being tenants in a combined medical venue makes more sense.

Developing a centre like that, I imagine, really depends on the support and interest of the HSE in the area.

I have a feeling (but I have not checked) that the population is declining in the counties you mention. If the population is declining, it does not make sense to open a ‘new’ GP practice or pharmacy. The sensible thing is to acquire/combine an existing one somehow.

It’s not as simple as you assert. Firstly, GPs may provide drugs and medicines directly to patients if the GP has only one practice centre and it is three miles or more from the nearest retail pharmacist. To put that in context, there are about 2,500 GPs practicing in Ireland. Only about 100 of them, so-called ‘out of hours’ GPs, mainly in rural areas, are dispensing, usually free samples of pain killers & heart meds, to tide patients over until nearest local pharmacy opens.

Secondly, both the NAGP and the IPU have issues with widening the scope of the present rules for dispensing GPs and have said so publicly. While there is overlap in training, the pharmacology aspect is not as developed in the training of MDs. Furthermore, both professions agree that there are safety and ethical issues in GPs dispensing, particularly when there is payment (non-medical card).

In Kerry the population continues to grow annually, now at about 150k, up from 120k in 1990. OP’s prospective business would be limited to Tralee (24k) and Killarney (14k) and maybe Listowel (5k). After that there is another big drop to +/- 2k in towns like Dingle, Killorglin and Kenmare. The latter had a medical centre in a shopping centre which also contains a pharmacy.

Several areas in Kerry are or have been without a GP in the last year, the interest in young doctors to move to rural Ireland is just not there.

antoinolachtnai

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/pharmacists-concerned-by-gp-plans-to-dispense-medicine-1.2648661?mode=amp

It looks to me like they are perfectly entitled to dispense. All that miles to the nearest pharmacist stuff is restrictive practice waffle and forbidden by TFEU. In the last analysis a person is either qualified to dispense or they are not.

There are opportunities in this too of course for a well organized pharmacist.

There are big professional issues for sure but there are also big issues with a pharmacy operating in conjunction with a GP. What the NAGP and the IPU think is very interesting but that’s about the extent of it.

I do not know those towns well or indeed the industry well but in my experience an awful lot of the towns in Ireland seem to have a very adequate number of pharmacies, growth notwithstanding. GPs are a whole different bag of cats of course.

GerardKeating

EndaHonesty wrote: »

Look for a GP paying high rent for a premises, or in a premises that requires investment and offer them attractive terms to move into your premises.

Use them like an anchor tenant.

And perhaps (if the town is big eneough) get a premise with rooms for a Dentist/Optition on site as well.

ohallod

GerardKeating wrote: »

And perhaps (if the town is big eneough) get a premise with rooms for a Dentist/Optition on site as well.

My colleague and I have identified two units in a retail centre in Tallaght. One unit is being marketed as a pharmacy and the other as a medical center. Can anyone suggest how I might be able to assess if a doctor and associated colleagues might be interested in co-locating?