A number of striking aspects emerge from our 2026 analysis of what the public values in, and how they interact with, the pharmacy. Shifts evident in the current survey highlight notable differences in the way many are using the pharmacy and a widening gulf between the needs and requirements of younger and older core user groups.
Pharmacies remain particularly busy with roughly the same proportion of the population visiting one each week (50%), although this is now constituting a much higher number of actual visitors because the population continues to grow. There has been growth by a quarter of a million extra weekly visitors over the past three years across the sector. We know from CSO projections of natural population growth and inward migration that the population, and, by extension, the number of pharmacy visitors, will continue to grow.
Our survey extrapolates to around 111 million pharmacy visits a year, a growth by roughly a million extra visits per month, when compared with three years ago.
In the context of continuing population growth any business that is oriented towards serving the general public, while also successfully expanding its role or remit, should be very well placed for success. However, pharmacy businesses need to be positioned and focussed to articulate their broadening relevance, while also ensuring that they are well organised to serve this growing demand.
Relatedly, more people are attending for consultative reasons, wanting to engage and interact with the pharmacist or their team, with a fifth now primarily visiting to ask the pharmacist their opinion. By extension, a growing number are comfortable with using the private consultation area and 22% have done so in the past month. This is a recovery in consultation area growth — which had eased back previously — and points towards a longer-term trend in how many younger patients are opting to use the pharmacy.
Undoubtedly, the shifting nature of how patients want to engage with the pharmacy is likely leading to greater demands on the pharmacist’s time. It is important that individual pharmacies develop systems to cope with an increased demand for more personalised and consultative service. They need to be able to discharge these types of visits quickly and efficiently.
Over a third of under-35s are coming in mainly for advice so this is undeniably important. Simultaneously, we see a five-percentage point growth in overall monthly visits by both age groups under the age of 35.
However, it is worth emphasising that almost a quarter (22%) feel that there isn’t a proper area in which to interact confidentially in their regular pharmacy. Under the age of 25 as many as 40% feel this. It may be that pharmacists are trying to avoid too many consultations and choosing to liaise or transact at the counter, but the experience is unsettling and points toward a need to streamline and professionalise how these types of visits are handled. Resolving this perceived gap in performance really needs to become a priority for the next few years.
It is this newer-style, more consultative use of the pharmacy which is more characteristic of the behaviour of younger adults and, notably, of men. Men invariably visit less often than do women but seem to have higher expectations of more personal service as a corollary.
While a younger generation is evidently keen to make use of the pharmacy’s evolving clinical service model, there is much to suggest that its’ older, foundational user group is still more reticent or uneasy about ongoing evolution.
We see gradual easing in support for some aspects of expansion of pharmacy service, albeit with more enthusiasm for involvement in areas like women’s health, contraceptive advice and such like. There appears to be comfort with the pharmacist providing more ‘serious-sounding’ services but a slight erosion of support for aspects such as blood pressure monitoring or examining sore throats and ears. Involvement in areas like mental health and STIs is seen in a quite mixed, if not indeed jaundiced, manner.
It is as if the older customer group feels that they will lose out by virtue of this expansion. It is important for them to believe that their custom remains a central priority despite the ability of the pharmacist to broaden their scope of practice and consequently, what services are offered. Interestingly, and supporting this contention, the study shows that older adults remain more likely to perceive the pharmacist as sitting a rung below the GP when it comes to medicines advice, whereas younger customers are more comfortable that the pharmacist can be the primary source of such information.
It appears difficult for older pharmacy users to have a more reconstructed perspective of what the pharmacist can and is able to do. They have greater difficulty with the idea of the pharmacy changing, or of altering their quite entrenched view of the relationship between the doctor and the pharmacist.
It is undeniable that the role and scope of the pharmacist had been relatively constant for a long period and that much of the change that has occurred has been in recent years. The pandemic was such an important catalyst and caused many patients, and we think particularly younger ones, to revisit their impression of what the pharmacist can and should be able to do. For younger customers therefore the pharmacist has been evolving for more of their tenure as a customer/patient, whereas for older users it is likely that they identify a lot of change after a period of relative stasis. This seems to cause discomfort for them. This points to the need for pharmacies to reassure the older core, high frequency medicine user group of their importance and centrality to pharmacy medicine provision.
As we have seen over the longer term there is generalised support for pharmacists offering a broader range of services. However, it is interesting that older, core customers express growing reservation, seemingly feeling that they will lose out in any expansion of the pharmacy offer. By contrast, younger customers and in particular women, are very supportive of expansion, with much female support for expanded services related to menopause, contraception advice and HPV testing.
However, when studying quite a broad range of more ‘routine’ services — blood pressure, sore throats, ear exams etc — we do see that support for expansion into these areas, although sizable, is slightly weakening.
We would interpret this as ‘a watch out’ that the pharmacist doesn’t become so busy that they lack time for customers who have traditionally relied on them for their foundational role in medicines provision and associated advice. Conversely, in areas where need may be greater or the potential conditions addressed is arguably more significant — Chronic Disease Management being a good example — support for expansion of service continues to rise.
A lesson we might take from this is that most of the public are supportive of initiatives that address what might be perceived as more critical conditions, or services intended to address systemic shortcomings. Equally, key demographics are strongly supportive of services that feed into their specific requirements, such as contraception or menopausal advice.
There is more wariness or tentativeness in the response to services which may seem too simple or run-of-the-mill, and particularly from older patient cohorts who have high polypharmacy usage. They regard the pharmacist branching out into new service areas as almost a zero-sum game: if someone benefits, they feel that they will lose out.
It remains important therefore that communication around service expansion reassures around the pharmacy’s organisation, resources and capacity to successfully manage new initiatives. Equally it must reassure around maintenance and the value derived by the public of the foundational medicine service provision and perhaps ringfence times or periods when the core visitor group might seem to be prioritised.
An area of slight concern this year is that many of the evaluative criteria against which we assess the pharmacist relative to the GP show signs of slight slippage by the pharmacist. The pharmacist remains well ahead of the GP in most of the comparable areas we assess but sees continued erosion on ‘capability of managing my day-to-day healthcare needs’, in respect of ‘value’, and for ‘broadening in focus’. Most worryingly, the pharmacist continues to remain well behind the GP ‘for being easy to talk to about healthcare problems and issues’.
Taken together, we interpret these elements of slippage as a sign that pharmacists may be seen to be excessively busy or over-committed. Projecting and delivering greater empathy and a sense of time to talk to and care for patents remains as critical a requirement as it was when we initially started drawing attention to this gap a few years back. Importantly, talking about expansion to pharmacy service provision probably mitigates against boosting a sense of more empathetic or personable service.
The 2026 index also highlights the pharmacy coming under pressure from online/digital retailers/platforms. Unfortunately, those who constitute the pharmacies core front-of-shop user group — young, relatively affluent, women — are equally as likely to consider digital options when shopping, exposing the pharmacy to competition that had not been so tangible previously. Whereas shopping was once a ringfenced, ‘9.00am to 5.00pm’ activity, pharmacies customers are now as likely to think about making a purchase while sitting watching TV or travelling on the bus to work, whether prompted by advertising or their social media and influencer feeds.
Even if pharmacy may struggle to compete here, it needs to communicate with, and have a ‘customer value proposition’ that, underscores the logic of also thinking about the pharmacy where the customer may be more attracted by a burgeoning array of digital competition. This may be more about enhancing the internal look and feel of the store or indeed, providing a seamless and harmonious omnichannel shopping experience that can aim to counter these new competitors.
Larry Ryan
Director, Ipsos B&A
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