Holland has its own symbol that represents an apotheek. Patrons can walk by and see the image of a man with his tongue sticking out and know that they can get medicine there. I've seen them in all of the pharmacies I've visited and the two apotheeks I was in today are no exception. I went to Soest with the Mediq Quality Manager, which is a fancy name for inspector, and watched how he makes apotheekers sweat while reviewing the Apotheek Handbook and looking for any offenses. The handbook contains Mediq policies and procedures as well as future goals the pharmacists makes to prove that they are trying to improve their pharmacy services. The regulations are quite similar to our board of pharmacy in OR - fire extinguisher, opioids have a locking drawer (even though they never lock it), clean room for sterile compounding, emergency exits, training, etc. The goals are reviewed and ways in which they are being implemented and evaluated are discussed. The goal of one of the pharmacies was to make their home delivery process more consistant and efficient by collaborating with her best driver and coming up with one procedure that every driver must follow.

The main problem that occured with both stores is how they deal with patient complaints. There is a new database in which complaints are handled and the assistants are doing it the old way using a paper format. Mediq wants everyone to use the computer forms in order to track the most common errors and complaints. The system they use is actually really cool - they can graph complaints of one store and see how they compare to the other stores. They also use the same system to log customer surveys and stores are graded against the average. Stores can get a grade of 1-4 with 4 being the "gold standard." I was told that most stores in this region were between a 3 and 4. Bart, the inspector, told me that of all the questions asked about the pharmacy, Mediq grades them based on the answers to the professionalism and courtesy questions. I should have asked what the other questions were.