How to Build a Pharmacy Sleep Service

Sleep is rapidly becoming one of the most interesting areas of opportunity for independent pharmacy. For years, community pharmacy has been closely associated with traditional services such as vaccinations, travel health, minor ailments and increasingly weight management. But the next phase of private pharmacy services is likely to be much broader. And sleep could be one of those areas.

Millions of people struggle with their sleep. For some, it is an occasional bad night. For others, insomnia can persist for months and have a substantial impact on concentration, mood, relationships, productivity and everyday life. For an independent pharmacy with the right clinical expertise, prescribing capability and governance, that creates an opportunity to build something much more valuable than simply another product page.

It creates an opportunity to build a complete pharmacy sleep service. A service that combines education, clinical assessment, lifestyle support, independent prescribing where appropriate, follow up and referral. And importantly, it is a service that can potentially operate both inside the pharmacy and online.

Start with the patient, not the medicine

This distinction is important. When pharmacies first think about entering a new clinical area, the starting point can sometimes be: “What can we prescribe?” A better question is: “What problem can we help the patient solve?” A good sleep service should not begin with a particular medicine. It should begin with the patient. Why are they struggling to sleep?

How long has it been happening? Are they struggling to fall asleep, remain asleep, or both? What is happening during the daytime? What have they already tried? Could another medical condition, medicine or lifestyle factor be contributing? Does the patient need treatment, behavioural support, further investigation or referral? That is where the opportunity for pharmacist independent prescribers becomes particularly interesting.

Independent prescribing allows pharmacists to take considerably greater ownership of a patient's clinical journey. GPhC prescribing standards describe the prescriber as taking responsibility for clinical assessment, establishing a diagnosis, determining the clinical management required and taking responsibility for the appropriateness of prescribing. That is a very different proposition from simply supplying a treatment. It allows the pharmacy to build a genuine clinical service.

A pharmacy sleep service can work in person and online

One of the major advantages community pharmacies have is accessibility. Patients already visit pharmacies for healthcare advice. Pharmacists are familiar healthcare professionals. Many pharmacies now have consultation rooms, booking systems and independent prescribers. At the same time, pharmacy technology has moved forward significantly. An assessment does not necessarily have to start at the pharmacy counter.

A patient could discover the service through Google, complete an initial clinical questionnaire online, book a consultation and speak with a suitably qualified prescriber remotely or in the pharmacy. The prescriber can then make an appropriate clinical decision. That creates a much more convenient patient journey while keeping clinical decision making at the centre of the service.

For pharmacy owners, it also means the potential market is no longer restricted to people living a few streets away. A well structured online prescribing service can create reach far beyond the pharmacy's traditional geographical catchment.

The clinical pathway is wider than the medicine

One of the reasons sleep has attracted more attention recently is the arrival of different approaches to treating long term insomnia. Daridorexant, marketed as Quviviq, is one example. Quviviq is licensed for adults with insomnia where symptoms have been present for at least three months and have a considerable impact on daytime functioning. NICE recommends daridorexant for certain adults with long term insomnia when cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia, commonly known as CBTi, has been tried without success, or when CBTi is unavailable or unsuitable. NICE also recommends reviewing treatment within three months and regularly thereafter if treatment continues.

That is significant. But it also illustrates exactly why a pharmacy sleep service should not simply become a “Quviviq service”. The clinical pathway is wider than the medicine. A pharmacy needs to understand the patient's sleep problem, consider behavioural approaches, review suitability for treatment and make an individual clinical decision. For pharmacies wanting to see how this type of treatment can sit within an online pharmacy environment, The Care Pharmacy provides an example of a patient information and consultation pathway for Quviviq.

View The Care Pharmacy's Quviviq information page

The important lesson for pharmacy owners is not simply that a new treatment exists. It is that independent prescribing makes it possible to design new clinical pathways around conditions that pharmacists are competent to manage.

Designing the pharmacy sleep service patient journey

There are several ways to structure the service. A patient journey might begin with a dedicated sleep clinic page explaining the problems the pharmacy can help with and how its assessment process works. The patient could then complete an initial screening questionnaire. This might collect information about areas such as:

• How long the sleep problem has been present
• Difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep
• Typical bedtime and waking time
• Daytime symptoms
• Current medication
• Previous treatments
• Alcohol and caffeine consumption
• Relevant medical history
• Symptoms that could suggest another sleep disorder
• Lifestyle factors

That information should never replace the clinical consultation. Instead, it can give the pharmacist useful information before speaking with the patient. The pharmacist can then conduct an appropriate consultation, assess the patient and decide upon the next step. For some people that may involve sleep education or behavioural changes. For others it might involve referral to another healthcare professional.

And for appropriate patients, a pharmacist independent prescriber operating within their competence may decide that prescription treatment should form part of the management plan. The result is a proper clinical pathway rather than a transactional ecommerce journey.

Build follow-up into your pharmacy sleep service

One of the biggest mistakes pharmacies can make when developing private services is treating the initial transaction as the end of the journey. Sleep is particularly suited to a different model. Imagine a patient entering a pharmacy sleep programme rather than simply ordering something once. Their journey might include an initial assessment, consultation, agreed management plan and subsequent review.

The pharmacy could provide a digital sleep diary. It could send educational information following the consultation. The patient could receive automated reminders before a review. The pharmacist could measure whether symptoms and daytime functioning are improving. Treatment could be reviewed at appropriate intervals. Patients who require additional investigation could be referred appropriately. This creates a far better clinical experience.

It can also build a much stronger relationship between the pharmacy and patient.

Independent prescribing changes what is possible

Independent prescribing represents one of the biggest strategic changes happening within community pharmacy. It allows pharmacists to move further from a supply focused model towards becoming providers of clinical care. Sleep is a useful example of what that future can look like. Instead of asking someone to visit their GP, wait for an appointment and then return to the pharmacy with a prescription, an appropriately trained pharmacist independent prescriber can potentially assess, prescribe and manage the patient within an integrated pharmacy service.

Of course, holding an independent prescribing qualification does not automatically mean a pharmacist should prescribe across every clinical area. Competence, training, governance, appropriate clinical protocols, indemnity, record keeping and referral processes all need to be considered. The pharmacist must be comfortable operating within their own scope of practice. But for pharmacists who develop competence in sleep and insomnia management, there is a genuine opportunity to create a highly valuable clinical service.

The technology behind an online pharmacy sleep service

This is where many pharmacies underestimate the work involved. Launching an online sleep clinic is not simply a case of creating a page saying “Sleep Clinic” and adding a booking form. The entire patient journey needs to be engineered. At Pharmacy Mentor, when we think about an online prescribing clinic, we consider the infrastructure behind the service.

That includes patient acquisition, clinical questionnaires, patient accounts, identity verification where appropriate, consultation workflows, prescribing, payments, communication, fulfilment, follow up and analytics. For a sleep service, you might also need:

• A structured clinical assessment
• A sleep diary
• Automated patient information
• Secure clinical records
• Video or telephone consultation capability where clinically appropriate
• Prescriber dashboards
• Prescription generation
• Follow up workflows
• Review reminders
• Referral pathways
• Analytics showing how patients move through the service

The website is only the visible layer. The real value sits in the system underneath it.

Marketing a pharmacy sleep service responsibly

Pharmacies also need to be extremely careful about how sleep services are marketed. Prescription only medicines cannot be advertised to the general public in the UK. The MHRA makes this clear in its medicines advertising guidance. This matters particularly when building online prescribing clinics. The pharmacy should market the clinical service and the condition it supports, rather than creating consumer advertising around individual prescription medicines.

That means the primary message could be: “Speak to a pharmacist about ongoing sleep problems.” Or: “Online assessment and pharmacist led support for insomnia.” The clinical consultation then determines which management approach is appropriate. Where prescription medicine information is provided publicly, pharmacies need to ensure that it is factual, balanced and compliant and that it does not become promotional advertising.

This is an area where pharmacies should take regulatory advice when required.

Building a sleep content strategy

Once the clinical pathway is built properly, there is a substantial digital marketing opportunity around sleep. People search Google every day for information about: “Why can't I sleep?” “How to treat insomnia” “Waking up during the night” “Can't sleep through the night” “Insomnia treatment” “Sleep clinic” “Help with insomnia” And hundreds of related searches. A pharmacy that builds a genuine knowledge centre around sleep can begin attracting patients much earlier in their decision making process.

Instead of relying entirely on advertising a consultation, the pharmacy can answer the questions patients are already asking. For example, a sleep content strategy could cover:

• What causes insomnia?
• How much sleep do adults need?
• Why do I wake up at 3am?
• Sleep hygiene and insomnia
• CBTi explained
• Sleep diaries and how to use them
• The relationship between caffeine and sleep
• Menopause and sleep
• Stress and insomnia
• Medicines that can affect sleep
• When to seek medical help for insomnia

Each article can lead naturally towards the pharmacy's sleep assessment or consultation service. That is how SEO becomes part of the clinical service infrastructure rather than simply a way of generating website traffic.

Start with one excellent clinical pathway

Pharmacies do not need to build an enormous sleep platform on day one. In fact, starting with a very focused service is probably the better strategy. Build one excellent pathway. Define which patients the service is designed for. Establish the assessment and consultation process. Create your clinical protocols. Determine the referral criteria. Train the pharmacy team.

Create the digital infrastructure. Then launch. Once that pathway is operating effectively, the service can develop. Over time, the pharmacy might add more patient education, digital CBTi resources, additional screening, different consultation options or partnerships with other healthcare professionals. The pharmacy could become known locally, and potentially nationally, for providing accessible sleep support.

The wider opportunity for independent pharmacy

The real opportunity here is bigger than sleep. Sleep is simply an example of the direction community pharmacy is moving. As more pharmacists become independent prescribers, the question will increasingly become: What clinical services can we build around that capability? Weight management has demonstrated what happens when pharmacy, prescribing, technology, ecommerce and digital marketing come together.

But it should not stop there. Men's health. Women's health. Dermatology. Travel medicine. Blood testing. Sexual health. Migraine. Sleep. There are numerous clinical areas where suitably trained independent pharmacists may be able to create valuable services, provided they have the appropriate competence, governance and clinical infrastructure. For entrepreneurial pharmacy owners, this represents an enormous opportunity.

The pharmacy of the future does not have to rely entirely on dispensing volume. It can become a destination for clinical care. And increasingly, that destination does not have to be limited by geography.

Build your pharmacy sleep service with Pharmacy Mentor

At Pharmacy Mentor, we help pharmacies build the technology, patient journeys and digital infrastructure required to launch and grow modern pharmacy services. That includes everything from the website and consultation journey through to prescribing workflows, ecommerce, payments, patient communication, fulfilment and digital marketing. If you are an independent prescriber and you are considering building a sleep service, or another specialist private clinic, speak to the Pharmacy Mentor team about how the entire patient journey could be designed.

Because the opportunity is not simply to put another service on your website. It is to build a clinical service that patients actually use.

Explore how to build a private pharmacy service online.