The service blueprint as a tool for designing innovative pharmaceutical services

To describe service blueprints, discuss their need and design, and provide examples of their use in advancing pharmaceutical care.

Service blueprints are pictures or maps of service processes that permit the people involved in designing, providing, managing, and using the service to better understand them and deal with them objectively. A service blueprint simultaneously depicts the service process and the roles of consumers, service providers, and supporting services. Service blueprints can be useful in pharmacy because many of the obstacles to pharmaceutical care are a result of insufficient planning by service designers and/or poor communication between those designing services and those implementing them. One consequence of this poor design and communication is that many consumers and third party payers are uninformed about pharmacist roles. Service blueprints can be used by pharmacists to promote the value of pharmaceutical care to consumers and other decision makers. They can also assist in designing better pharmaceutical services.

Blueprints are designed by identifying and mapping a process from the consumer's point of view, mapping employee actions and support activities, and adding visible evidence of service at each consumer action step. Key components of service blueprints are consumer actions, "onstage" and "backstage" employee actions, and support processes.

Blueprints can help pharmacy managers identify and correct problems with the service process, provide pharmacy employees an opportunity to offer feedback in the planning stages of services, and demonstrate the value of pharmaceutical services to consumers.

Service blueprints can be a valuable tool for designing, implementing, and evaluating pharmacy services.