Gimme a Break
Wednesday was my day off, so I decided to mail some bills. I completed all of my mailings and realized that I didn't have any stamps. When I arrived at the Post Office, I was greeted by the sign "Closed for Lunch from 11:30 to 12:30."
Thinking I could drop off most of the payments on the way home, I started at the bank where there was a long line because the other tellers were out to lunch. After waiting out the line to pay my electric and phone bills, I stopped at my attorney's office and found that they were out to lunch. Stopping next at my dentist's office, I found the same thing: out to lunch.
I was not angry for these inconveniences, because I believe most individuals understand that everyone takes a lunch break and most do from the hours of 11am till 1pm.
Meet Arden P.
Huntington Beach, CAI'm Arden Pratt and I've worked as a pharmacist for more than 44 years. A lot has changed about our work over the years, which is natural, but the thing that has changed the most is the way the huge chains control everything now.
I used to work for Sav-On which was a feeling of being part of a family company. When CVS took over Sav-On, they changed everything. Nothing about the way we did things at Sav-On remained, regardless of how things might have worked better before the take over. The thing that bothers me is that they totally changed the way the pharmacy is run. CVS dictates procedures and times you on everything from how many rings it takes to answer the phone to how many minutes it takes to fill a prescription. They place an emphasis on these reports. We'd be better off if we could just focus on filling prescriptions accurately and fast instead of being manipulated by these reports.
Meet George L.
North Brunswick, NJ
My name is George Lippman. I'm a 1978 graduate of Rutgers College of Pharmacy. I wish I could say that I went into pharmacy to help people or because of some otheView image noble cause, but I actually went into it because I spent a lot of time playing basketball in-between classes my freshman year of college. I was a liberal arts major and had no idea what I was going to be. I became friends with another guy who was playing ball. He was in pharmacy school and talked me into transferring. There have been times the last 30 years when I wish I'd never touched a basketball, but overall it's been an interesting and rewarding experience.
I've spent my whole career in retail. I started out working for independents back when there were no generics, price updates were done once a month (Red Book, Blue Book), patient counseling was few and far between, and almost everybody paid cash. Drug reps would come in with bagfuls of sample drugs and we'd spend hours scraping the word "sample" off of the tablets and capsules with a single edge razor blade. (If we did that today we'd be in a LOT of trouble. Hopefully the statute of limitations has passed.) Third party claims would have to be filled in by hand and then mailed. When you eventually got paid you'd have to go through the claims with a fine-tooth comb to make sure they didn't short-change you. I still don't know why, but my first boss had us "price code" everything in the pharmacy department. The code was R-E-M-A-I-N-S-O-L-D. R was 1, E was 2, etc., so a bottle marked ERSN cost $21.76. I don't know who he thought was going to steal our prices.
Meet Rhonda R.
Union, NJ
I've been a retail pharmacist for 18 years. My objective is to accurately fill each and every prescription. In many instances, prescriptions are presented that require additional clarification. Issues such as drug interactions, dosage adjustments and inadequate information are routinely addressed. Achieving a positive resolution to these prescriptions gives me the greatest satisfaction during the course of the day.
Unfortunately, we are often faced with prior authorization requests from the insurance plans. This is one of the most time consuming issues we face as pharmacists. Each time we face a rejected claim transmission, you cannot help but wonder how long it will take to resolve the prior authorization request. Is the doctor available to change the drug to a different medication? How long will it take from the initial request to the approval or denial of the drug? Hours? Days? Weeks? The bottom line is that we as pharmacists have to focus on the patients best interests. It just seems that the patient's care should be maximized and the hurdles to achieve that care should be minimized.
Meet Gino Z.
Vernon, CT.My name is Gino and I am a retail pharmacist working for a major retail chain pharmacy in the United States. I have been a retail pharmacist since I graduated in 1996 and I have to confess that my opinion of my profession and my professionalism have since declined as the years went by. When I decided to pursue pharmacy school back then, I felt I was going to make a difference, when it came to both people's quality of life and therapy choices, choices driven by a sense of commitment, compassion, caring, and selflessness.
As soon as I graduated, a major pharmacists' shortage occurred, which added great strain on most pharmacists, who now had to work longer hours, while often shorthanded, to make up for the lack of pharmacists during a retail pharmacy growth explosion. It was a very stressful time that made many of us wonder if we had made the wrong decision in choosing a career in pharmacy, especially when it came to the retail sector. At the same time the HMO's gained more and more control and decision making when it came to drug therapy as well as reimbursement fees to pharmacies, consequently driving many independent, as well as smaller drug chains, out of business.
Do Chains Care About Quality?
One of the problems with retail pharmacy is that the big chains sometimes seem like they care more about their bottom lines than about providing quality care.
If front-line pharmacists made all the decisions, would the following things be happening?
- Coupons constantly driving customers from one chain to another
- Incentives to switch customers' medications that have nothing to do with improving care
- Not having enough tech staff on hand
- Not getting to take real breaks, scarfing down meals in ten minutes.
- Pharmacists in California, who by law must get a half hour break, sometimes getting no break because their big chain employers bend the rules.
Meet Scott P.
Huntington Beach, CA
I'm Scott Parker and I've been a pharmacist for more than 38 years. I'm willing to throw in my two cents about how we can improve our profession inside the retail chain pharmacy industry but I really want to encourage younger pharmacists to get involved in Put Pharmacy First, too because it's about the future.
When I first went into the pharmacy it was a matter of quality rather than quantity. Now there is such a pressure to fill quotas, fill prescriptions faster and faster, that we don't have time for quality. You have to give me time to practice pharmacy rather than counting, putting pills on a tray or pills in a bottle or a label on a bottle. You need time to practice pharmacy, which is becoming less and less.
I can't blame it on the company because the companies want to make money and you know the way to make money is to increase productivity. What if the pharmacists said, "You know, I'm only going to fill or be associated with 100 prescriptions a day. You have to give me time to practice pharmacy." Let's see the pharmacists who are willing to stand up to productivity quotas.
Meet Lucky Y.
Brockton, MA.My name is Lucky Yang. I live in Brockton, Massachusetts, and I work for retail chain pharmacy in Brockton as well. In high school, I was undecided about what I wanted to do as a career, but knew I wanted to do something in the medical field. My guidance counselor suggested pharmacy to me and so I filled out a few applications. Before I knew it I was in college taking classes, the years went by and I graduated. As a student, my first experience working in a pharmacy was at a hospital setting. Later on I worked in a distribution pharmacy where we packaged medication to be delivered to nursing homes, jails, etc.. and eventually ended up in retail pharmacy. I was working in retail as a student, got a job offer and took it because I was familiar with the company. Overall I am satisfied with helping patients, making it easier for them when it comes to their medical needs, and answering questions that they have.
Although, I do like my job there are some challenges that make it difficult for me to perform to my highest ability. I always go to work giving 100 % but its hard to maintain that level when you are constantly being bombarded by obstacles. Some of these challenges are long days, high script volume and lack of help. Long hours are challenging because you have to be on your toes and it can be mentally draining. You definitely need to be focused when we are checking, especially if you are checking 500 scripts in a 12 hour shift, your mind will take a beating. Which may lead to inaccuracies. High script volume can be a challenge, because the more scripts you have to do the less time you have to counsel patients and that is such an important part of this job. At times, it seems more like a factory, where we are on an assembly line just pumping out scripts. While I do appreciate the position I am in and the money I am making, I just feel that something could be done to make my job less stressful and more satisfying.
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My name is Ray Funatsu and I've been a pharmacist since 1963. In '74 I started working as a manager with Sav-on until '94; that's when I stepped down because it got to be a little too much. I worked until 2000 and retired and now I'm on-call.
