Drive-Thru community pharmacy in the “New Normal Era”: An innovation in pharmaceutical services and its socio-economic impact

Abstract

The new normal has become the “now normal”. Indeed, it is now inevitable that the health care system has changed, including the pharmaceutical services. A big evolution has taken place which will correspond to a huge change in pharmaceutical practice in order to keep abreast with the new normal and continue rendering pharmaceutical services and access to the community. The emergence of new ideas in order to meet the demands of the society in terms of pharmaceutical services while keeping the community safe from contamination with the coronavirus has taken a tool. This pandemic situation has indeed opened an avenue of new pharmaceutical services like Drive-Thru Pharmacy, Telepharmacy and Door-to-Door Delivery of Medicines. However, the full practice of these pharmaceutical services are not yet fully developed and accepted. Several studies have indicated that during the pandemic community pharmacist have faced ample challenges like emotional exhaustion (13.39%) and depersonalization (5.64%) which were higher in comparison to pre-Covid-19 situation. Indeed, Pharmacist are experiencing burnout with work from the demands of the consumers but supplies are limited. Truly, the Covid-19 pandemic has created a great havoc in the pharmaceutical industry especially during the lockdowns. Though market trends for Drive-Thru Pharmacy is suggestively positive but the actual materialization of this new pharmaceutical service innovation is left to be further studied for full global development and acceptability. This review aims to elucidate the possible good benefit of Drive-Thru pharmacy especially during the pandemic. Its birth, challenges, potential market trend and socio-economic implications shall be discussed and its corresponding correlation.