Financial aspects of community pharmacies in Slovakia (2009-2014) Finančné aspekty verejných lekární na Slovensku v rokoch 2009-2014

Community pharmacies play an important role in the process of ensuring public health. Pharmacists provide pharmaceutical care that includes acquiring, storing, preparing, reviewing and dispensing medicines, medical devices and dietary food to the inhabitants; providing them with information and advice; acquiring, storing and dispensing additional assortment; carrying out physical and biochemical testing for primary prevention and monitoring of drug efficacy and safety. At present, there are constant changes which have direct or potential and often negative impact on community pharmacies. For providing affordable and good quality pharmaceutical care, it is important to continuously monitor and analyse the developments in the financial data in community pharmacy business management. The data file from 2009-2014 on financial performance of selected community pharmacies were obtained from the Register of Financial Statements at Ministry of Finance Slovak Republic. A group of 194 community pharmacies were selected that represented more than 10 percent of all pharmacies. The selection criteria respected the territorial division of the Slovak Republic on districts, the size of municipalities (cities and villages) and location (at or near health centres, shopping centres, housing estates, etc.). The evaluation parameters were gross profit, net profit, revenue from sales of goods and services, operating expenses, total assets, inventory, short-term receivables, total receivables, financial assets, owner’s equity, total liabilities, current liabilities and their characteristics (25^th, 50^th, 75^th percentile, minimum, maximum, mean). The financial parameters obtained and their characteristics presented the basic information on the management of community pharmacies. The data also provided information for further assessment on factors that might have an impact on their value and direction of evolution.