Accelerating Clinical Services: Strategic Planning Guide for Pharmacy Success in 2025

The pharmacy landscape in Canada is undergoing a profound transformation. With the rapid expansion of pharmacists’ scope of practice in recent years, particularly in minor ailments prescribing, pharmacy teams are stepping into a pivotal role in healthcare delivery. As patient expectations grow and clinical services become a cornerstone of modern pharmacy care, preparing for these changes is more critical than ever.

According to the latest statistics from the Canadian Pharmacists Association (CPhA), patients see their pharmacists anywhere from 1.5 to 10 times more often than their primary care physicians. Pharmacists are taking on expanded roles and deliver an estimated $4.7 billion of value per year by improving access to care and reducing pressure on the health-care system.

It’s clear that the demand for pharmacist-led clinical services is on an upward trajectory. Provinces like Ontario and Quebec are expecting substantial scope expansions in the coming months, empowering pharmacists to prescribe for a wide range of minor ailments and chronic conditions. This shift represents a remarkable opportunity for pharmacies to redefine their value to patients and communities alike.

Amid this evolution, strategic planning has never been more essential. To thrive in this dynamic environment, pharmacy teams must embrace tools and workflows that enhance patient care, efficiency, and ensure compliance with local requirements/regulations. That’s where MAPflow comes in. As a purpose-built solution for minor ailments prescribing, MAPflow is designed to help pharmacies navigate this new era with confidence.

In this guide, we’ll explore how you can transform your pharmacy practice in 2025 using MAPflow. From aligning your services with industry trends to optimizing workflows and improving patient outcomes, this strategic planning guide will provide actionable insights to position your pharmacy for success.

Setting Pharmacy Service Goals: A Framework for Success

Strategic goal setting is at the heart of every successful pharmacy practice transformation. By adopting a structured framework for setting and achieving goals — and using the MAPflow dashboard to easily track and measure your progress — you can ensure that your team is aligned, motivated, and focused on delivering exceptional patient care while meeting business objectives.

As you work through your 2025 goal-setting, we suggest applying the SMART goal framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) to various aspects of your pharmacy practice. Here are a few areas (with sample benchmarks) that may be tracked with support from the MAPflow dashboard.

‍

1. Clinical Service Targets

Setting clear, measurable goals for your clinical services ensures consistent growth and enhanced patient care. Here are some sample goals and targets you may want to set for your pharmacy!

●     Monthly Consultation Targets: 10%. Increase

For example, aim to increase your pharmacy’s minor ailment consultations per month. This specific and time-bound target provides a clear benchmark for your team to work toward.

●     Follow-Up Completion Rate Goals: 90% Completion

Strive to increase your follow-up completion rate to ensure patients stay on track with their treatments and improve outcomes.

2. Business Performance Metrics

Aligning clinical goals with business objectives is key to creating a sustainable pharmacy model.

●     Revenue Mix: 30% from Clinical Services

Set a goal to have 30% of your revenue generated from clinical services within the next year. This reduces reliance on traditional dispensing income and positions your pharmacy for long-term growth.

●     Team Efficiency: 50% Reduction in Follow-Up Time

Improve workflow efficiency by reducing time spent on follow-ups by 50% (by using the patient-directed follow-up feature). Implementing tools like MAPflow can help streamline processes and save valuable time for your team.

●     Team Utilization Goals: 75% of Team Using MAPflow

Ensure that 75% of your team members are actively using MAPflow to standardize care delivery and maximize productivity.

3. Patient Care Quality Indicators

Patient-centred care is at the core of modern pharmacy practice. Setting goals around care quality ensures you’re consistently meeting patient needs.

●     Follow-Up Rates: 100% Follow-Up

Aim to follow-up with 100% of the patients you prescribe for as a best practice, and to enhance patient engagement in their health journey.

●     Clinical Intervention Success Rates: 95% Resolution or Improvement

Target a 95% resolution or improvement rate for minor ailments, demonstrating your team’s effectiveness in addressing patient needs. (MAPflow-assisted minor ailment assessments have an average of 97.5% symptom resolution or improvement upon follow-up.)

Beyond the Basics: Innovation in Pharmacy Practice

Beyond improving your numbers, streamlining your workflow, and delivering exceptional patient care, MAPflow can also help you innovate beyond the traditional bounds of pharmacy practice.

MAPflow empowers pharmacy teams to deliver innovative, patient-centered care in a variety of settings. By streamlining the prescribing process and enabling efficient, compliant workflows, MAPflow allows pharmacists to meet patients where they are — whether that means prescribing antibiotics for a traveller in urgent need or conducting mobile assessments to support vulnerable populations. Here are just two of many case studies of how MAPflow users applied our powerful software to think outside the box.

1. Prescribing for a patient on the road

Tracey Phillips, Pharmacist and Owner at Westport Village Pharmacy, got a call from a long-time patient who was in a bit on a bind: she was out of town attending a funeral, and she had just developed a painful urinary tract infection.

Instead of having to scramble to find an urgent care clinic and spend hours in the waiting room, the patient got what she needed with one quick call to Tracey. Tracey was able to use MAPflow to perform a phone assessment and prescribe antibiotics, which she faxed over to a pharmacy near the patient. The patient was thrilled with the level of care and convenience, and a minor ailment that might have taken numerous hours and hassles to treat was addressed in just a few minutes.

2. Reaching out to underserved populations

When University of Waterloo Pharmacy student, Siobhan O'Connor, introduced herself to her local community pharmacist, Aly Govindji, she learned that he delivers daily safe supply and opioid agonist therapy to underserved communities in the Kitchener Waterloo region, and he felt that he could do even more for his clients with additional administrative help.  She volunteered to join him and a unique project was born.

Their project is a pharmacist-led, patient outreach service, providing pharmacy services to underserved communities. The duo make regular visits to community centres, shelters, tent cities, and provide follow-ups with patients. Being mobile helps them reduce the barriers that might stop someone from using a walk-in pharmacy clinic such as access to transportation or chronic pain. And the new expanded scope of practice for pharmacists in Ontario allows the team to address more needs in this population.(Note: services provided outside of the pharmacy are not currently eligible for MOH payment in ON.)

Govindji explains, "We discovered a need for additional healthcare services in these communities through our opioid agonist therapy, and the new expanded scope has been a great tool to meet some of those needs." The pair use MAPflow for their minor ailment prescribing in a unique way.
“While in the community, we're using MAPflow to help patients who may be stigmatized or suffer from other barriers that hinder them from visiting a pharmacy. We utilize MAPflow for minor ailments prescribing and identifying patients requiring further referrals.”

Using MAPflow To Reach Your 2025 Pharmacy Goals

In addition to tracking metrics and KPIs, team performance monitoring, and delivering exceptional patient care, MAPflow can help you meet your 2025 goals in a number of ways. You can watch our recent webinar for a full run-down, but here are just a few of the highlights:

●     Use patient engagement tools like the Patient-Directed Follow-Up feature (only available with the per-pharmacy subscription)

●     Improve your documentation efficiency and stay equipped for a potential audit

●     Save an average of 15 minutes per patient interaction, enabling you to serve more patients, faster

●     Streamline your team’s workflow and enhance collaboration with the per-pharmacy subscription

As you complete your strategic planning for 2025, MAPflow will be an invaluable tool for tracking metrics, supporting your team, and delivering unmatched patient care.

Want more MAPflow? Make sure to subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on social to stay aware of all of the new features we’re adding in 2025!

‍

‍