Filialapotheke

A Filialapotheke is a branch pharmacy operated by the same owner as the main pharmacy. It has its own premises, its own staff and a pharmacist responsible for it on site, so it operates as a pharmacy in its own right rather than as a counter belonging to somewhere else. The owner is responsible across all of the sites, which is what makes the group a Filialverbund rather than a set of unrelated businesses.

It is a different instrument from a Zweigapotheke. A Zweigapotheke is granted to secure medicine supply in an area that would otherwise not be supplied, it is tied to that purpose, and what it may do and for how long is narrower as a result. A Filialapotheke needs no such supply justification, so it is not limited in that way. The conditions attaching to each are set out in the guidance from the ABDA and the Landesapothekerkammer, including how many branches one owner may hold and what the permit for each requires. Those documents are worth reading in the original rather than from memory.

The distinction matters most when a service is rolled out across sites. Since the ApoVWG came into force on 2 July 2026, Blutentnahme is an apothekenübliche Dienstleistung, and an owner with three sites tends to read that as one decision. In practice it is three decisions, because each site has to be equipped and staffed on its own:

• Each site needs its own equipment, because equipment cannot be moved between branches on the day it is needed.
• Each site needs its own trained staff, because the training belongs to the person and not to the group.
• Each site needs its own written procedures in force, even where the Standardarbeitsanweisung is drafted once centrally.

A member of staff qualified at the main pharmacy does not cover an appointment at a branch unless that person is there. Most Filialverbünde draft the procedures centrally, which is sensible, but four parts of the documentation cannot be centralised:

• The responsible person has to be named for that individual site.
• The room actually used for the service has to be the one at that site.
• The equipment written into the procedure is the equipment actually in that building.
• The evidence that the staff there were trained on that version is kept there.

A binder that exists at the main pharmacy and not at the branch is a gap at the branch. The realistic plan is therefore to pilot at one site, get the procedure stable, and then repeat the local work at each further site rather than assume it applies automatically.