Here’s one vital piece of information you can use to put people who are grumbling about the prescription queue in their place: pharmacies in England dispense prescriptions faster than the time it takes to serve up a Quarter Pounder at McDonalds.

It takes an average of 2 mins 6 secs* for a pharmacy to dispense an item, while McDonalds take a whole 2 mins 40 secs** to serve up their burgers.  This is according to data crunched by online pharmacy delivery partner Gophr, who deliver for online pharmacies such as Numark,

Gophr's data crunching also suggests that pharmacy closures mean there are areas of the country that are turning into ‘pharmacy deserts’. A ‘Pharmacy desert’ refers to an urban area where an increasing number of people are accessing a diminishing pool of pharmacies.

The South East and London are the biggest urban ‘pharmacy deserts’, with 5,882 and 5,195 people potentially accessing each pharmacy according to the latest regional data. Other significant ‘pharmacy deserts’ are the West Midlands and North West, with 4,619 and 4,227 people per pharmacy.

There are 11,026 pharmacies in England, the lowest number since 2010, with 1,274 closures in the last three years. Each pharmacy in England serves an average of 6,078 people. A single pharmacy in England dispensed 248 prescriptions a day on average in 2022.

 Demand for pharmacy services is also being driven by an ageing population. Across England and Wales, people aged 65 and over now account for 18.6 per cent of the population.

 Kurtis Dodge, senior commercial and digital proposition manager at Numark, commented: “There’s no denying that the pharmacy sector is facing significant challenges, but also that demand for pharmacy services is ever increasing.  

 “Delivery services can offer pharmacies the opportunity to branch out to those customers who may fall into one of the ‘pharmacy deserts’. It has the potential to relieve some of the pressures on pharmacies with structured delivery routines for regular repeat prescription patients.”

* Total number of dispensed prescriptions, divided by total number of pharmacies, divided by the 40 hours a week, divided by 5 days. This gives the daily dispensing figure which you divide by 7.5 (hours) to reveal the hourly dispensing rate.

 ** McDonalds