Pharmacy
A sector in structural transformation, so a site is judged against what the format is becoming rather than what it was.
What it weighs most
Population 55+ within a 10-minute drive
22% of the score. The rest is on this page.
01 / The problem
Pharmacy is in structural transformation. A site judged against the old format is a site judged against a business that is disappearing, and the score will look fine right up until it does not.
02 / The decisions it serves
Not a report. A decision somebody has to sign.
Each of these is a question your team already asks, and currently answers with a spreadsheet, a phone call and a fortnight.
Whether the 55+ base is growing or draining
Over-65s fill roughly three times the prescriptions of a younger adult. The cohort is the business.
Whether the prescribers are close enough
Within a mile of physicians, clinics or hospital outpatient, because that is where the scripts originate.
Whether you can build a drive-through
It is now two thirds of prescription pickups. A site that cannot have one is competing with one hand tied.
Whether the network is even open to you
Exclusion from a major benefit manager is a commercial fact no trade area can compensate for.
03 / The method, in the open
Here is exactly what it weighs. Argue with it.
Most tools will not show you this, because most tools do not have it. These are the weights the playbook really uses.
Population 55+ within a 10-minute drive
Over-65s fill roughly 35 scripts a year
Traffic count
Prescriber proximity
Physicians, clinics, hospital outpatient
Competitor pharmacy density
Insurance and PBM network
Drive-through capability
Corner visibility
Clinic integration potential
04 / It is willing to say no
It does not hand you numbers. It gives you a verdict.
An assistant that only ever agrees with you is a mirror, not an analyst. This one holds a line, names the thing that kills the deal, and will tell you to walk away from a site you already like.
The thresholds it holds you to
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Fewer than three pharmacies per 10,000 people is an opportunity. The national average is about 3.5.
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Within one mile of physician offices, clinics or hospital outpatient.
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Traffic above 20,000 vehicles a day, because the drive-through is now the dominant format.
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Drive-through accounts for 65 to 70% of prescription pickups.
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Roughly 150 to 200 scripts a day to break even for a chain drugstore.
What it will not let you ignore
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The 55+ population is declining in the trade area.
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More than four pharmacies per 10,000 people, which is oversaturated.
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No drive-through capability, and no way to add one.
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Exclusion from a major pharmacy benefit manager network.
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A nearby hospital closing or relocating, which takes the prescription referrals with it.
05 / Why not just ask an AI
A fluent answer and a defensible one are not the same thing.
Every model will answer a location question now, and most of the answers sound right. Ask twice and you get two of them. Ask where the number came from and the room goes quiet.
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It weights prescriber proximity as a factor, because the trade area for a pharmacy is not where people live, it is where they are prescribed to.
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It measures pharmacies per ten thousand people against a real national baseline rather than counting pins on a map.
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It knows the format is changing, so it evaluates the site against the healthcare-hub model, not the drugstore that is closing.
06 / What it runs on, and what you get
The data underneath
Licensed and authoritative, and named in the output, so the number keeps its source when it travels.
- Esri GeoEnrichment
- Census
What you walk out with
A scored assessment against every factor above, on the live map, with the method beside it.
The method it used and the vintage of every number travel with it, so it still holds up when somebody asks you why in six months.
How an answer travels07 / It pairs with
Nobody makes one decision in isolation. Most teams run this alongside two or three of these.
Run Pharmacy on something you already decided. See if it agrees with you.
The honest test of a method is whether it reaches the conclusion your best analyst already reached, and tells you plainly when it does not.
Twenty minutes, and you can argue with the weights.