Two major pharmacy chains announced this week that they were reducing their hours in response to staffing shortages. Walmart pharmacies will be closing earlier in the evenings and CVS pharmacies will cut or shift hours at 2/3 of its nationwide locations. These two join a third major chain, Walgreens, which started acting in October to reduce pharmacy hours and streamline its pharmacist’s hours. Pharmacist burnout has long been a problem with the industry.
Major pharmacy chains have created environments where pharmacies are understaffed and pharmacists are assigned to growing lists of tasks. The same providers are then pressured to meet performance goals on high numbers of volume of orders filled and future renewals secured to demonstrate future revenue streams for the pharmacy. Pharmacists have been voicing concern over this type of business model for years, and now the major chains are finding themselves short-staffed and unable to extend their pharmacists any further.
From the market’s perspective, many staffing issues were exacerbated by the pandemic and the “great resignation.” Now the chains are pulling back somewhat on the demands they have been imposing on their pharmacists.
Walgreens is responding to a labor shortage by developing a system of robotic drug filling centers. The company claims that the system reduces pharmacist workloads by 25% and (most importantly, of course) saves the company $1B a year. The concept is further framed as freeing up pharmacists to provide patient care like consultations and vaccinations.
From a patient care perspective, relieving pressure on pharmacists should lead to less mistakes and less injuries downstream. From the negligence perspective, one can’t help but wonder what a malpractice claim against a pharmacy would look like for misfiling or mislabeling medications? The system is relatively new, but the coming years will be informative as to how error-prone these robots are. And, whether it is the robot manufacturer, programmer (a different entity?), or owner (Walgreens) who is ultimately liable for errors.
