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Pharmacy Stores

Facts About Stores

  • We supply stock medicines to wards and clinical departments within the Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital NHS Trust.
  • We also supply stock medicines to Cromer and District Hospital and wards and clinical departments within the local Primary Care Trusts.
  • We negotiate buying contracts though the purchasing consortium, pharmaceutical companies and wholesalers for discounts on many of the medicines we supply, saving the Trust thousands of pounds a year.
  • Each ward's stock list is designed to reflect the medicines commonly used on that ward. Once a week ward stocks are topped up to a pre-determined level, this level is set so that the stock lasts for at least a week.

Internal Processes


In pharmacy we have to spread our time over several different tasks which include:

  • Listing of top ups for wards and units
  • Booking stock in from suppliers checking batch numbers and expiry date
  • Loading our automated robot
  • Picking top ups.
    • Our automated robot pick the majority of our items
    • Non-robot items are manually picked
      N.B. Items that cannot go in the robot are:
      • Non-boxed items
      • Item that are too heavy
      • Items without an English bar code
  • Over labelling of certain packs e.g. Antibiotics and analgesia
  • Boxing up the top ups ready for dispatch and delivery by porter

Purchasing & Supplies

Another side of stores is buying the drugs for the hospital pharmacy. We have to negotiate contract prices which are then passed on to wards and units – this means when items are requested from us we are able to supply at the best price.

Income is generated by wholesaling to G.P. surgeries and community pharmacy's for extemporaneous prescriptions (Pharmacy holds a wholesaling licence issued by the M.R.H.A)

We supply:

  • Norfolk & Norwich Hospital Wards
  • Norfolk & Norwich Hospital specialist units
  • Community Hospital
  • Specialist outside units
  • Cromer and District Hospital wards
  • Cromer and District Hospital specialised / units – allies, renal unit and outpatient clinics
  • Ambulance Trust, air ambulance and Norvic paramedic services.