From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Why Your Neighborhood Pharmacy Isn’t So Friendly Anymore   
   By Joseph Walker Nov. 2, 2023, WSJ   
   Long lines of disgruntled customers. Harried pharmacists shuffling back and   
   forth to counsel patients and answer phones that seem to never stop ringing.   
   Household toiletries locked behind theft-proof cases.    
      
   America’s big chain pharmacies are a mess.   
      
   CVS Health and Walgreens Boots Alliance took in big profits in the pandemic   
   thanks to generous reimbursement for administering millions of Covid-19   
   vaccinations. But now the companies are struggling to respond to gripes from   
   pharmacy employees who say    
   they are overworked and understaffed, and more liable to make prescription   
   errors that put their patients’ safety at risk.   
      
   CVS and Walgreens pharmacists and their support staff have staged sporadic job   
   walkouts around the country in recent weeks, hoping to publicize their   
   complaints and goad management into concessions.    
      
   “Companies have put in place practices that drive revenue and have created a   
   fast-food scenario. Vaccinations every five minutes. Fill prescriptions in 15   
   minutes,” says Bled Tanoe, a former Walgreens pharmacist in Oklahoma City   
   who left the company    
   in 2021. “All of the focus was on profits, but not better staffing, better   
   pay and better training.”   
      
   Customers are also increasingly unhappy. CVS’s satisfaction rating dropped   
   23% from 2021 to 2023, according to an annual survey by consumer research firm   
   J.D. Power. Walgreens’s rating dropped 25% over the same period.    
      
   Molly Priesmeyer, 50, has been going to the same Walgreens in Minneapolis for   
   years, but since the pandemic the lines are often 15-people deep, with wait   
   times as long as 20 minutes, Priesmeyer says. The pharmacy is staffed by   
   longtime employees who are    
   dedicated to their jobs but appear to be increasingly stressed out as they   
   scramble to provide vaccinations and deal with grumpy customers complaining   
   about delays, she says.    
      
   “You can tell that they are overwhelmed. It is just this constant,   
   never-ending line,” says Priesmeyer.    
      
   CVS and Walgreens say they are trying to address an industrywide shortage of   
   healthcare workers, amid unprecedented demand for vaccines.    
      
   “We know there are areas where we can improve and are working to develop a   
   sustainable and scalable action plan that supports both our pharmacists and   
   our customers so we can continue delivering the high-quality care our patients   
   depend on,” a CVS    
   spokeswoman says.    
      
   At Walgreens, the company is making “behind-the-scenes infrastructure   
   changes as well as scaled investments to provide additional support to our   
   pharmacy teams so that they can spend more time with patients, and so that we   
   can provide the best possible    
   experience for our customers,” a spokesman says.   
      
   The investments at Walgreens to recruit and retain pharmacy staff included   
   $265 million in its fiscal year that ended in August, on top of $190 million   
   in the prior year. The investments are aimed at addressing greater demand for   
   flu, Covid-19 and RSV    
   vaccines amid industrywide labor shortages, the spokesman said.     
      
   CVS is also experimenting with ways to ease the burden on its pharmacies. One   
   idea that is being tested in certain stores: Don’t answer the phone and   
   instead send customer calls to voicemail, CVS employees told The Wall Street   
   Journal. Pharmacists then    
   have a few hours to call them back. The CVS spokeswoman said the aim is “to   
   help ensure our pharmacy teams can focus on providing clinical care.”   
      
   The problems inside pharmacies have been building for years but accelerated   
   during the pandemic, says Michael Hogue, chief executive of the American   
   Pharmacists Association, a professional group.      
      
   “What we have is a crisis that is been brewing for quite a long time,”   
   says Hogue. “Chain drugstores and others haven’t been providing an   
   adequate amount of staffing for pharmacies, and the pharmacist is being asked   
   to do a whole lot more than    
   putting pills in bottles.”   
      
   Filling prescriptions has become less profitable because of reduced payments   
   from insurers and pharmacy-benefit managers, analysts say. The so-called front   
   end of the pharmacy store, which sells everything from shaving cream to beach   
   balls, has been hurt    
   by consumers doing more shopping online.   
      
   To diversify, CVS and Walgreens are branching out to provide a broader set of   
   healthcare services, and acquiring primary-care clinics and home-healthcare   
   doctor practices, while closing hundreds of pharmacy stores. Investors want to   
   see the companies    
   focus on these new lines of business rather than invest in improving the   
   retail experience, analysts say.    
      
   “There is not really a structural change coming to the pharmacy business   
   that would help drive greater profit growth going forward,” says Elizabeth   
   Anderson, an Evercore ISI analyst.   
      
   Like much of the healthcare industry, CVS and Walgreens are grappling with   
   labor shortages, particularly for the support staff known as pharmacy   
   technicians. They are the workhorses of the pharmacy, doing most of the work   
   of putting pills in bottles. But    
   the jobs are often underpaid, and many techs have left the industry in recent   
   years for better-paid or less-demanding work, says Hogue.   
      
   Through the third quarter of 2023, there were nearly 32,000 job openings for   
   retail pharmacists, and nearly 112,000 pharmacy technician job openings,   
   according to the Pharmacy Workforce Center, a nonprofit that collects pharmacy   
   employment data. The    
   median hourly wage for pharmacy technicians was $18.17 last year, according to   
   the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Pharmacists earn on median $132,750 annually,   
   according to BLS.    
      
   Last year, Vermont’s Office of Professional Regulation filed a complaint   
   against Walgreens with the state board of pharmacy, alleging that   
   understaffing had led to unscheduled store closures, prescription delays and   
   errors including giving a patient a    
   Covid-19 booster shot instead of the flu shot they were supposed to get.   
   Another Walgreens customer was given an incorrect dosage of medication,   
   resulting “in low blood pressure, dizziness and fogginess,” the state   
   alleged.   
      
      
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