April 25, 2007
Pharmacist Shortage Hurts Retailers and Consumers
There are real consequences to the pharmacist shortage and that is apparent in Nogales, Ariz., where a Walgreens is closing its pharmacy earlier during the week and completely on the weekends until it can find new hires to staff the store.
Carol Hively, a spokesperson for Walgreens, told NogalesInternational.com that the company is “working on recruiting” new pharmacists and is looking to move people around shifts to keep the Nogales location open longer.
Ms. Hively advised locals to call ahead to the pharmacy to be sure it is open before venturing out. Unfortunately, if the store is closed, the next nearest Walgreens is 35 miles away.
The situation faced by Walgreens in Nogales is growing increasingly common for pharmacies faced with a shortage of licensed pharmacists. It is a situation that is not likely to get better soon.
Discussion Questions: How common are situations such as that faced by Walgreens in Nogales, Ariz.? What type of impact is the pharmacist shortage having on the growth plans of retail pharmacy operators? How are retailers operating pharmacies dealing with the situation at hand?
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This is happening much more often below the surface than we are led to believe. Most retailers have been able to juggle deployment of critical people to cover, but as this situation shows, it can and does impact retail hours from time to time. The real issue is how this type of problem is going to become a regular event in the years to come. The ability to find and retain retail labor will emerge as one of the most significant retail problems in the next 10 years. This is the very reason why the internet and home delivery will become a viable option in every retail channel in the years ahead.
One consideration for the pharmacist shortage could be a person’s desire to contribute beyond being a “pill counter.” Until the big box retailers realize that interaction builds loyalty with the customer/patient and at the same time job satisfaction for the pharmacist, issues along these lines will continue to exist. Very few smart and ambitious Gen-Yers will want to go to pharmacy school if it means that their job life will be spent behind a counter counting pills. We all know that money alone as the driving force for going into a profession eventually creates bigger issues than a shortage of workers.
To elaborate on Richard’s posting, the shortage is a combination of the growth in pharmacy locations and the limited number of universities offering pharmacist degree programs. In addition, those pharmacy schools, by design, limit the number of students enrolled into their programs. However, some for-profit universities are entering this market with pharmacy schools of their own design. I believe some of the thousands of qualified students now waiting for a slot into their state university programs will be attracted to the for-profit university programs.
Who is questioning this supposed “fact”? Just because some corporate pharmacies cannot hire a pharmacist doesn’t mean that anyone is being denied the services of a pharmacist. The Yellow pages for Nogales list an Osco and an independent pharmacy, among others in their yellow pages. Maybe this is a Walgreens problem!
Did anyone look into the possibility that the retailer in question is not trying hard enough to attract a pharmacist? Or could their corporate policies or working conditions be causing this problem? How does Osco do it? Ask the right questions and you might get some real answers.
Evidently the available pharmacist population is emerging as a limiting factor in the “saturation expansion” plans of our largest drug store chains. I too have encountered pharmacies closed for a 60-minute lunch break–at my local Target.
This is not a desired customer service standard, to say the least, but it is an economic fact of life, especially in areas of lower population density. Nogales, a small border city, does not generate sufficient prescription trade to let Walgreens keep its pharmacy counter open 24/7. An extra factor are the farmacias just across the Mexican border, which purvey common prescription drugs at lower prices, siphoning off some volume.
It must be tempting for the chains to advocate relaxed rules that would permit lower-salaried pharmacy techs to dispense unsupervised, but they should be wary of the liability issues this might raise. Not to mention the all-important service image projected by trained professionals behind the counter. Longer-term, Walgreens, CVS and others should make sure their companies support the pharmacy schools with plenty of scholarship awards and other support.
The shortage of pharmacists will become more acute as our aging population explodes. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that today’s 35 million citizens age 65+ will jump to 40 million by 2010.
Ok–so the Age Wave is coming. The question is one of supply and demand. To meet demand, chains will have a few strategic routes to take: 1. Hire from overseas pools of younger workers and sponsor their green cards, 2. Use pharmaceutical “technicians” to do the legwork of pharmacists, under the (hopefully) watchful eye of a degreed professional, or 3. Change their ordering protocols to improve the output capacity of a pharmacy.
That’s my prescription.
At the present time, I’m at the National Association of Chain Drug Stores (NACDS) Annual Meeting in Scottsdale, AZ where I learned about the shortage of licensed pharmacists in certain geographical areas, and in some markets. Having talked to chain drug executives, I have a few thoughts:
1. The current demands on pharmacists, including the extraordinary hours of open pharmacies, makes it difficult for professional people with families at home, including thousands of women that otherwise would embrace the profession.
2. The current situation is making it difficult in certain markets for chain drug stores to provide 24 hour open pharmacies.
3. To be a pharmacist is still an excellent profession.
Pharmacists in many ways have even more credibility with the public than physicians because they are in the position to know the drugs well, the interactions, and they sometimes know the comprehensive medical histories of their customers even better than the doctors that prescribe the medications.
I predict that as the word gets out more about the shortage, we will see rising numbers of young people, and possibly even more older people and semi-retired people, decide to enter and re-enter the field of pharmacy.
Pharmacist staffing is a longstanding problem which chains and independents have gotten pretty resourceful about solving. Retailers address the talent shortage in many ways, including: automated dispensing, robotics and IVR (interactive voice response) technologies where volume warrants such investments; systems that speed third-party reconciliations; telepharmacy in more remote locations; the running of select 24-hour stores within a market to handle off-peak demand; and novel recruitment and retention strategies. Certainly, competitive salaries are costly and necessary, but flexibility also goes a long way. For example, some retailers recruit women pharmacists who’ve left the work force to give birth to return when ready on very flexible schedules. Others bring back retirees. Others may recruit from abroad and find their language skills a plus in particular store locations. Pharmacy schools aren’t the only source of new hires. The pharmacist shortage has been with us for two decades, and one consistency I’ve seen is the personal toll it takes on independent store owners.
A shortage in good pharmacists hurt both the retailer and the consumer. A good pharmacist is one that interacts with customers, establishes trust and answers questions. I remember when one visited the local pharmacy…before the big chains where prevalent…the pharmacist knew your name, the pharmacist answered questions…the pharmacist made one feel comfortable and at ease. Without that connection, it makes no difference to me, as a consumer, what pharmacy I use. I will use the one most convenient to me. For the consumer, the shortage means a) an inconvenience and b)no one to answer their questions.
Allow me to share a personal experience. My doctor told me he wanted me to monitor my own blood pressure. I went into a chain drug store. I walked to the pharmacy area and waited a few minutes for assistance. The people staffing the pharmacy area were busy is the back…perhaps filling prescriptions…who knows. So, I asked a clerk who was stocking shelves a few feet away if she knew where the portable blood pressure monitors were. To her credit, she said follow me. They were, as I had suspected, behind the pharmacy counter.
She pulled one off of the shelf. I asked her what the difference was between the one that she put on the counter and the others on the shelf. She said probably price. I saw one that measured on the arm and another that measured on the wrist. I asked what the difference was. Her answer was that people usually prefer the one for the arm.
She never offered to get the pharmacist for me. She never made me feel comfortable with her answers. I told her I needed to ask my doctor which one would be better. I did not buy a monitor in that store.
A good pharmacist would have answered my questions, made me feel good, made a sale and possibly made a loyal customer.
Didn’t we both suffer?
I see this as being quite common. I was in Connecticut last week at a Shaws and the pharmacy was shut down during mid day because the pharmacist was on his lunch break and no one was around to take his place. Pharmacies are closing earlier and often on Sundays. Its very difficult for smaller chains to recruit when larger chains are offering full scholarships and signing bonuses. The best way to deal with the shortage is to keep throwing money at new recruits.
Because pharmacists can cost $100,000 or more, low volume pharmacies aren’t as profitable. On a trip to Madrid, I was impressed by the arrangements that drug stores made with each other. They posted a sign at each location with a late night rotating schedule. In other words, competitors rotated which stores would be open all night, and posted that calendar in the window. So the drug stores saved themselves money yet the public was served. Sooner or later, some state will eliminate the need for a pharmacist for all prescriptions except narcotics. But don’t hold your breath waiting.
Mark is correct, and in this instance the personnel require very specific training and educational background. (This is not like finding staffing to run the cosmetics department at Walgreens.) Demand for pharmacy product can only expect to grow as the population ages…which in theory puts stores like Walgreens in position for long-term growth given their aggressive real estate strategy. But drug retailers and discounters with big pharmacy businesses will need to do a better job teaming with local colleges and universities to ensure a growing supply of labor to meet this opportunity.
This is just the start…with the increasing number of prescriptions, more complicated drugs (biotech) and customer’s ridiculous expectations of service times (gimme fries with that!)–this will only get worse. Something needs to change and change fast….
Part of this issue goes back to the laws relative to dispensing of drugs. Legally, a registered pharmacist has to check every prescription. As a practical matter, this is impossible.
Most prescriptions now come pre-packaged and filling the order is a matter of counting pills. Busy drugstores now make liberal use of pharmacy techs who are often paid a fraction of what the pharmacist makes. At the same time, nobody wants to suggest changing the laws and risking the liability of reduced pharmacist involvement.
Unless the laws are changed, an aging population and increased demand for drugs will likely add to the pharmacist shortage.
An increasing challenge is how to manage the shortage of pharmacists while still conveying “customer service” to consumers.
Mail order may just become more convenient and less expensive for consumers in the long run.
There is a real shortage of pharmacists. This creates a situation where many are able to pick up multiple extra shifts for overtime pay. Their $100K job can easily become a $250k job. Retailers are eager to pay the overtime to avoid cutting pharmacy hours or shutting down a pharmacy altogether.
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This is happening much more often below the surface than we are led to believe. Most retailers have been able to juggle deployment of critical people to cover, but as this situation shows, it can and does impact retail hours from time to time. The real issue is how this type of problem is going to become a regular event in the years to come. The ability to find and retain retail labor will emerge as one of the most significant retail problems in the next 10 years. This is the very reason why the internet and home delivery will become a viable option in every retail channel in the years ahead.
One consideration for the pharmacist shortage could be a person’s desire to contribute beyond being a “pill counter.” Until the big box retailers realize that interaction builds loyalty with the customer/patient and at the same time job satisfaction for the pharmacist, issues along these lines will continue to exist. Very few smart and ambitious Gen-Yers will want to go to pharmacy school if it means that their job life will be spent behind a counter counting pills. We all know that money alone as the driving force for going into a profession eventually creates bigger issues than a shortage of workers.
To elaborate on Richard’s posting, the shortage is a combination of the growth in pharmacy locations and the limited number of universities offering pharmacist degree programs. In addition, those pharmacy schools, by design, limit the number of students enrolled into their programs. However, some for-profit universities are entering this market with pharmacy schools of their own design. I believe some of the thousands of qualified students now waiting for a slot into their state university programs will be attracted to the for-profit university programs.
Who is questioning this supposed “fact”? Just because some corporate pharmacies cannot hire a pharmacist doesn’t mean that anyone is being denied the services of a pharmacist. The Yellow pages for Nogales list an Osco and an independent pharmacy, among others in their yellow pages. Maybe this is a Walgreens problem!
Did anyone look into the possibility that the retailer in question is not trying hard enough to attract a pharmacist? Or could their corporate policies or working conditions be causing this problem? How does Osco do it? Ask the right questions and you might get some real answers.
Evidently the available pharmacist population is emerging as a limiting factor in the “saturation expansion” plans of our largest drug store chains. I too have encountered pharmacies closed for a 60-minute lunch break–at my local Target.
This is not a desired customer service standard, to say the least, but it is an economic fact of life, especially in areas of lower population density. Nogales, a small border city, does not generate sufficient prescription trade to let Walgreens keep its pharmacy counter open 24/7. An extra factor are the farmacias just across the Mexican border, which purvey common prescription drugs at lower prices, siphoning off some volume.
It must be tempting for the chains to advocate relaxed rules that would permit lower-salaried pharmacy techs to dispense unsupervised, but they should be wary of the liability issues this might raise. Not to mention the all-important service image projected by trained professionals behind the counter. Longer-term, Walgreens, CVS and others should make sure their companies support the pharmacy schools with plenty of scholarship awards and other support.
The shortage of pharmacists will become more acute as our aging population explodes. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that today’s 35 million citizens age 65+ will jump to 40 million by 2010.
Ok–so the Age Wave is coming. The question is one of supply and demand. To meet demand, chains will have a few strategic routes to take: 1. Hire from overseas pools of younger workers and sponsor their green cards, 2. Use pharmaceutical “technicians” to do the legwork of pharmacists, under the (hopefully) watchful eye of a degreed professional, or 3. Change their ordering protocols to improve the output capacity of a pharmacy.
That’s my prescription.
At the present time, I’m at the National Association of Chain Drug Stores (NACDS) Annual Meeting in Scottsdale, AZ where I learned about the shortage of licensed pharmacists in certain geographical areas, and in some markets. Having talked to chain drug executives, I have a few thoughts:
1. The current demands on pharmacists, including the extraordinary hours of open pharmacies, makes it difficult for professional people with families at home, including thousands of women that otherwise would embrace the profession.
2. The current situation is making it difficult in certain markets for chain drug stores to provide 24 hour open pharmacies.
3. To be a pharmacist is still an excellent profession.
Pharmacists in many ways have even more credibility with the public than physicians because they are in the position to know the drugs well, the interactions, and they sometimes know the comprehensive medical histories of their customers even better than the doctors that prescribe the medications.
I predict that as the word gets out more about the shortage, we will see rising numbers of young people, and possibly even more older people and semi-retired people, decide to enter and re-enter the field of pharmacy.
Pharmacist staffing is a longstanding problem which chains and independents have gotten pretty resourceful about solving. Retailers address the talent shortage in many ways, including: automated dispensing, robotics and IVR (interactive voice response) technologies where volume warrants such investments; systems that speed third-party reconciliations; telepharmacy in more remote locations; the running of select 24-hour stores within a market to handle off-peak demand; and novel recruitment and retention strategies. Certainly, competitive salaries are costly and necessary, but flexibility also goes a long way. For example, some retailers recruit women pharmacists who’ve left the work force to give birth to return when ready on very flexible schedules. Others bring back retirees. Others may recruit from abroad and find their language skills a plus in particular store locations. Pharmacy schools aren’t the only source of new hires. The pharmacist shortage has been with us for two decades, and one consistency I’ve seen is the personal toll it takes on independent store owners.
A shortage in good pharmacists hurt both the retailer and the consumer. A good pharmacist is one that interacts with customers, establishes trust and answers questions. I remember when one visited the local pharmacy…before the big chains where prevalent…the pharmacist knew your name, the pharmacist answered questions…the pharmacist made one feel comfortable and at ease. Without that connection, it makes no difference to me, as a consumer, what pharmacy I use. I will use the one most convenient to me. For the consumer, the shortage means a) an inconvenience and b)no one to answer their questions.
Allow me to share a personal experience. My doctor told me he wanted me to monitor my own blood pressure. I went into a chain drug store. I walked to the pharmacy area and waited a few minutes for assistance. The people staffing the pharmacy area were busy is the back…perhaps filling prescriptions…who knows. So, I asked a clerk who was stocking shelves a few feet away if she knew where the portable blood pressure monitors were. To her credit, she said follow me. They were, as I had suspected, behind the pharmacy counter.
She pulled one off of the shelf. I asked her what the difference was between the one that she put on the counter and the others on the shelf. She said probably price. I saw one that measured on the arm and another that measured on the wrist. I asked what the difference was. Her answer was that people usually prefer the one for the arm.
She never offered to get the pharmacist for me. She never made me feel comfortable with her answers. I told her I needed to ask my doctor which one would be better. I did not buy a monitor in that store.
A good pharmacist would have answered my questions, made me feel good, made a sale and possibly made a loyal customer.
Didn’t we both suffer?
I see this as being quite common. I was in Connecticut last week at a Shaws and the pharmacy was shut down during mid day because the pharmacist was on his lunch break and no one was around to take his place. Pharmacies are closing earlier and often on Sundays. Its very difficult for smaller chains to recruit when larger chains are offering full scholarships and signing bonuses. The best way to deal with the shortage is to keep throwing money at new recruits.
Because pharmacists can cost $100,000 or more, low volume pharmacies aren’t as profitable. On a trip to Madrid, I was impressed by the arrangements that drug stores made with each other. They posted a sign at each location with a late night rotating schedule. In other words, competitors rotated which stores would be open all night, and posted that calendar in the window. So the drug stores saved themselves money yet the public was served. Sooner or later, some state will eliminate the need for a pharmacist for all prescriptions except narcotics. But don’t hold your breath waiting.
Mark is correct, and in this instance the personnel require very specific training and educational background. (This is not like finding staffing to run the cosmetics department at Walgreens.) Demand for pharmacy product can only expect to grow as the population ages…which in theory puts stores like Walgreens in position for long-term growth given their aggressive real estate strategy. But drug retailers and discounters with big pharmacy businesses will need to do a better job teaming with local colleges and universities to ensure a growing supply of labor to meet this opportunity.
This is just the start…with the increasing number of prescriptions, more complicated drugs (biotech) and customer’s ridiculous expectations of service times (gimme fries with that!)–this will only get worse. Something needs to change and change fast….
Part of this issue goes back to the laws relative to dispensing of drugs. Legally, a registered pharmacist has to check every prescription. As a practical matter, this is impossible.
Most prescriptions now come pre-packaged and filling the order is a matter of counting pills. Busy drugstores now make liberal use of pharmacy techs who are often paid a fraction of what the pharmacist makes. At the same time, nobody wants to suggest changing the laws and risking the liability of reduced pharmacist involvement.
Unless the laws are changed, an aging population and increased demand for drugs will likely add to the pharmacist shortage.
An increasing challenge is how to manage the shortage of pharmacists while still conveying “customer service” to consumers.
Mail order may just become more convenient and less expensive for consumers in the long run.
There is a real shortage of pharmacists. This creates a situation where many are able to pick up multiple extra shifts for overtime pay. Their $100K job can easily become a $250k job. Retailers are eager to pay the overtime to avoid cutting pharmacy hours or shutting down a pharmacy altogether.