MyDispensary Article in Pharmacy Today

Timea and MyDispensary have been featured again in Pharmacy Today.

The article explores how Timea transformed MyDispensary into a preventive health hub, expanding the role of community pharmacy beyond dispensing medicines.

We’d like to thank Pharmacy Today for the opportunity to share our story.

The article is reproduced below with permission.

MyDispensary Pharmacy & Clinic owned by Timea Venter is a finalist for the CrestClean Business
Achievement Award at the 2026 New Zealand Primary Healthcare Awards | He Tohu Mauri Ora.

Mrs Venter has reimagined and transformed her pharmacy from a dispensing-focused service to a
proactive, patient-centred, preventive health hub.

Building relationships with patients is key says Mrs Venter. It’s about being able to listen, assess, triage and guide

Curiosity about people and a passion for supporting them to live health-filled lives is why West Auckland
pharmacy owner Timea Venter became a pharmacist. Then one day, she noticed something at her
MyDispensary Pharmacy & Clinic (called Henderson Discount Pharmacy at the time) that made her stop and
think.

“I’d watch our patients come in, walk straight past the hall shelving packed with products, straight to the
counter. They’d ask for me or one of our team by name. And what they wanted to do was talk,” Mrs Venter says. She realised that while she and her team of 10 knew how to be efficient, fast and transactional, each
interaction still laster around two minutes” “We’d become really good at managing illness when the
essence of what we really do in community pharmacy for me is the conversations and the relationship. People
come in for people.”

Serving diverse population

Mrs Venter has owned MyDispensary on Great North Road since 2009, holding her own as one of now 17 pharmacies within a 5km radius. The team serves a diverse population, with many patients aged 45 and over,
including people with unmet primary care needs and chronic conditions.

“We always had a few chairs out for those who wouldn’t be able to stand and wait for their prescription. Because I’ve always been a curious person, I’d sit down and chat. The more we chatted, the more they would tell me and then I would try to help.”

What Mrs Venter found most rewarding was the fact that “the more I helped, the better they got. And the
better they got, the better I got at helping them.” So, starting in 2025, armed with her nutrition and positive psychology studies, Mrs Venter decided to reimagine and transform her pharmacy from a dispensing-focused service into a proactive, patient-centred preventive health hub.

For her efforts, Mrs Venter has been named a finalist for the CrestClean Business Achievement Award at the 2026 New Zealand Primary Healthcare Awards | He Tohu Mauri Ora.

Build it and they will come

“First off, I knew I needed to change the physical layout of our space. So, I got rid of that long wall of products
everyone ignored and installed a consultation room,” she says. The privacy of a closed door allowed patients in for an Early Care or minor-illness consult to relax and have a more in-depth conversation.

Mrs Venter could also provide preventive health intitatives such as free blood pressure screening.
“I’d say, ‘how’s your blood pressure’ to the waiting patients. ‘Do you want to check it quickly?’ And then
we’d have a conversation.”

Along with the rebrand, renovation and investment in new computer systems, her team began experimenting
with longer consultations, screening, nutrition and lifestyle support, follow-up and broader clinical services.
But the biggest learning wasn’t about individual services. It was the role of the pharmacist: listening,
assessing what is actually going on, and helping the patient work out what comes next.

Changing role of the pharmacist

The pharmacist role can be far more than supplying medicines or providing a specific service, says Mrs
Venter.

“It’s about being able to listen, assess, triage and guide. Sometimes we can treat the patient ourselves, sometimes we need to support them over time, and sometimes the right thing is to connect them with
another healthcare professional.”

A referral, she says, isn’t a failure of pharmacy. “Sometimes the most valuable thing a pharmacist can
do is recognise that someone needs different care and help them get there.”

Focusing on the relational aspects and connecting with their patients is also good for business, she says.
“Once you build that rapport with a patient, you’re a part of their health journey. We were connected, they would tell their friends and family about the health conversations and then those people would come in to
see us. Even selling something as simple as a multivitamin could open up a longer conversation about
what that individual actually needed, and they’d come back.”

Making brave decisions

The MyDispensary model has been in place for five months. Understanding what hasn’t worked and why is
valuable data because it shows where time and resources are needed, Mrs Venter says. Her long-term-
conditions patient numbers have increased with her Wegovy patients supported by a nutrition and positive
psychology approach.

Patients began asking her for recipes, prompting her to start writing a cookbook. She has also started being
asked to share what she is learning about weight management with others in the health sector.

While she had a plan in mind, Mrs Venter didn’t install a ready-made pharmacy model. Some of what she has
implemented had not been done before and was not guaranteed funding. “I decided it is better to start and try something, show the data of its success and hopefully funding will follow.”

Associate minister of health and ACT Party leader David Seymour was so impressed by the service-based
business model Mrs Venter shared with him that he launched the party’s Pharmacy First plan on 6 August,
saying, “what Timea is doing, we want to do throughout New Zealand”.

Mrs Venter sees an opportunity to expand the pharmacist’s role into a clinically strong, accessible front
door to healthcare.

“If you’re worried you can’t guarantee that money will really flow, slowly introduce changes one at a time. If
you feel it’s right for who you really are, do it,” she says.