DISTANCE and making health choices easier are key themes behind a chemist’s delivery service.<\/p>\n
Goldfields Pharmacy Delivery is transporting medicine and other goods from Smythesdale to Skipton, Ballarat and and as far as Dereel.<\/p>\n
Smythesdale Pharmacy has been running the service since this year.<\/p>\n
The pharmacy had always done deliveries, but it recently brought on a driver and transport vehicle.<\/p>\n
“It’s been one of the things that I’ve been wanting to do for a long time,” owner Briddon Hardwick said.<\/p>\n
“We’ve finally got enough customers behind us now to make it worthwhile having a delivery driver.”<\/p>\n
He said the biggest problem he found for residents across the region was they were separated by significant distance.<\/p>\n
“We do have an older population out here as well,” he said.<\/p>\n
“So that plus the fuel prices being a lot higher than what they used to be, people aren’t driving around as much or are trying to get as many trips in at one time.<\/p>\n
“What I thought then, if that’s the case, we should have a delivery service to try and take the pressure off people thinking, ‘I don’t want to drive 20 minutes to the pharmacy for one tablet’.”<\/p>\n
Hardwick was concerned that fuel costs could have residents making difficult choices about their medication.<\/p>\n
“It could lead to people not taking their medicines as much because it might be a case of well, ‘I don’t have much petrol, I’ve either got to get food or I’ve got to get medicine’,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Sometimes they’re not in the same place at the same time.”<\/p>\n
Hardwick believed the service had been beneficial.<\/p>\n
“We’ve definitely picked up a lot of clients that probably wouldn’t have used us as a pharmacy in the past because we didn’t offer that service,” he said.<\/p>\n
“The other thing, too, is that I personally believe that we should be delivering to people that do need it as much as possible.<\/p>\n
“Some people are a bit more isolated, so we do have to kind of go out to further locations.”<\/p>\n
The service also delivers meals as well as consumables for home care or NDIS packages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DISTANCE and making health choices easier are key themes behind a chemist’s delivery service. Goldfields Pharmacy Delivery is transporting medicine and other goods from Smythesdale to Skipton, Ballarat and and as far as Dereel. Smythesdale Pharmacy has been running the service since this year. The pharmacy had always done deliveries, but it recently brought on […]<\/p>\n