Rite Aid stores to offer Amazon pickup

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Brian Lutz
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Rite Aid stores to offer Amazon pickup

Post by Brian Lutz »

https://komonews.com/news/business/amaz ... t-rite-aid

By the end of 2019, Amazon customers will have the option to pick up their orders at one of 1,500 Rite Aid stores. This appears to be similar to how Kohl's has started taking Amazon returns, and has reported that doing so has increased store traffic.
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Re: Rite Aid stores to offer Amazon pickup

Post by storewanderer »

Rite Aid can't seem to generate decent financial results after the failed attempt to merge with Walgreens and the subsequent sale of extremely low volume mostly 30+ year old strip mall or former Eckerd stores in not so well off areas to Walgreens. I can't figure out what is going wrong and keep falling back to a conclusion that it is blatant mismanagement. At this point the chain may be too small to compete and the pharmacy business has gotten really difficult to profit from with all the reimbursement challenges. Just this week Wal Mart laid off thousands in its pharmacy operations in the US. Prescription demand is going up and pharmacist wages are falling due to a lot of new graduates yet for some reason these pharmacy operators are having miserable financial results and despite payroll savings still laying people off. The pharmacy business seems to have gotten squeezed badly in recent years yet drug costs are at an all time high so I don't know who is making the money or what is going on... I suspect these better integrated operators like CVS who have insurance, PBM, and pharmacy are making a lot of money by getting a piece of each transaction while others who lack that sort of vertical integration and/or scale of such integration are having challenges... but back to Rite Aid, they are left with good stores. Their per store volumes should be above CVS and close to Walgreens at this point. The store operations I observe are great (way better than CVS or Walgreens).
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Re: Rite Aid stores to offer Amazon pickup

Post by Alpha8472 »

Walmart has always staffed their pharmacies with more employees than CVS, Walgreens, or Rite Aid. Walmart believed it is better to not understaff and overwork employees which leads to medication errors and lawsuits. People would go to Walmart because you get much better service. At CVS or Walgreens you could get put on hold for an hour on the phone, but Walmart Pharmacy employees have to answer the phone by the third ring.

Walmart is less busy for prescriptions than other chain drugstores. The pharmacy employees are required to go out of their way to provide the best customer service, unlike the big chains. Big chains only care about prescription volumes and care less about lawsuits if medication errors are made. It is all about the numbers. Walmart has layers of double checking to ensure accuracy.

The problem is that pharmacies lose money on Medicaid. Walmart takes even the money losing Medicaid plans, while Rite Aid and Walgreens do not take the money losing plans such as Blue Cross Medi-Cal. Walmart knows they lose money on prescriptions, but it keeps people coming back to the stores to buy cart loads of merchandise which make up for the losses on prescriptions.

Rite Aid is different as customers don't usually load up a cart full of purchases. They make little on prescriptions and not much on purchases either.
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Re: Rite Aid stores to offer Amazon pickup

Post by storewanderer »

I was in Rite Aid in South Lake Tahoe, CA tonight and they already have signs up about the Amazon Pickup. It is not clear to me where they are storing packages; I did not see any lockers or similar up front.

At least they are trying something...

Wal Mart's pharmacies seem pretty busy up here in Nevada, but I've never used them. In some rural areas, Wal Mart is just about the only pharmacy operator so it is nice of them to keep taking even the low reimbursement/money losing plans.
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Re: Rite Aid stores to offer Amazon pickup

Post by Alpha8472 »

CVS makes money off of its insurance and PBM. That is where the money is being made. Rite Aid has a PBM, but I rarely ever see it used at my pharmacy. I do not know what is going on at Rite Aid, but they cannot even run a PBM at all. They need to get more customers on the Rite Aid PBM.

At pharmacies, the profit is made on insulin. Those expensive brand name only insulin pens cost thousands. The profit is huge. The drug companies that make insulin are the real money makers. Pharmacies make most of their profits on brand name insulin. There is no generic for insulin.

Other profitable drugs are brand name drugs for HIV or other rare diseases, but fewer people are on those drugs. Contrary to popular belief, pharmacies make little on pain medications such as Norco or Percocet.

In fact, many chains don't give work hours for filling such medication. Employee work hours are based on how many prescriptions of non opioid or non-controlled medications. Pharmacies want to discourage opioid abuse which has been killing off customers in recent years.

CVS Caremark is a huge network covering tons of patients. Rite Aid is not covering much of anyone. I would think that there is internal sabotage or serious mismanagement from within. It is as if people from a rival company are trying to make Rite Aid fail from the inside.
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Re: Rite Aid stores to offer Amazon pickup

Post by J-Man »

I've been picking up Amazon deliveries at an Amazon locker inside the Rite-Aid in Azusa (CA) for the last few weeks.
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Re: Rite Aid stores to offer Amazon pickup

Post by storewanderer »

I too have never heard of Rite Aid's PBM or anyone using it. Rite Aid's PBM supposedly has 20 million members, I wonder where they all are...

I notice Envision RX HQ is in Ohio. I think Rite Aid got rid of its stores in that state.
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Re: Rite Aid stores to offer Amazon pickup

Post by Super S »

storewanderer wrote: June 29th, 2019, 9:41 am I too have never heard of Rite Aid's PBM or anyone using it. Rite Aid's PBM supposedly has 20 million members, I wonder where they all are...

I notice Envision RX HQ is in Ohio. I think Rite Aid got rid of its stores in that state.
They are still in Ohio:

https://locations.riteaid.com/locations/oh.html
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Re: Rite Aid stores to offer Amazon pickup

Post by storewanderer »

Super S wrote: June 29th, 2019, 1:08 pm
storewanderer wrote: June 29th, 2019, 9:41 am I too have never heard of Rite Aid's PBM or anyone using it. Rite Aid's PBM supposedly has 20 million members, I wonder where they all are...

I notice Envision RX HQ is in Ohio. I think Rite Aid got rid of its stores in that state.
They are still in Ohio:

https://locations.riteaid.com/locations/oh.html
I see they only sold a few stores.

In Columbus I noticed a couple late 90's Rite Aid buildings being operated by CVS when I was there recently. Looks like they are in mostly medium markets in Ohio.

At least Rite Aid has pretty deep penetration throughout CA, OR, WA, and PA.

https://www.walgreens.com/topic/store/r ... s.jsp#Ohio
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