Rite Aid Buys Bartell Drugs

storewanderer
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Re: Rite Aid Buys Bartell Drugs

Post by storewanderer »

BillyGr wrote: May 22nd, 2021, 2:15 pm For that matter, don't prescription bottles have all the information needed (Doctor name, quantity, number of refills left, how long they are valid for)? They could just take your existing bottle and re-enter that into the system if it was otherwise misplaced, and would be easier than trying to get new ones for everyone.
There may be some sort of regulation that they need to have a record of the original prescription or a record of the call in and someone could fairly easily forge a prescription label...

Still, this is inexcusable. I have no idea how this happened but this is a big miss. Rite Aid needs to figure out how to fix this.

Rite Aid's operation keeps getting worse and worse, so I am not holding out much hope.
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Re: Rite Aid Buys Bartell Drugs

Post by Super S »

I seem to remember similar issues happening when Rite Aid took over PayLess Drug years ago.
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Re: Rite Aid Buys Bartell Drugs

Post by storewanderer »

Super S wrote: May 22nd, 2021, 9:11 pm I seem to remember similar issues happening when Rite Aid took over PayLess Drug years ago.
I am sure it is different now but years ago when a pharmacy closed and another pharmacy did the file buy, the records of the closed pharmacy by prescription number were literally burned onto a CD or some other sort of media and transferred over to the new pharmacy that bought the files. So it was a manual process each time the new pharmacy had to go in and retrieve the data on the script from the old pharmacy but it was a seamless process for the customer and doctor involved in most cases.
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Re: Rite Aid Buys Bartell Drugs

Post by BillyGr »

storewanderer wrote: May 22nd, 2021, 2:21 pm
BillyGr wrote: May 22nd, 2021, 2:15 pm For that matter, don't prescription bottles have all the information needed (Doctor name, quantity, number of refills left, how long they are valid for)? They could just take your existing bottle and re-enter that into the system if it was otherwise misplaced, and would be easier than trying to get new ones for everyone.
There may be some sort of regulation that they need to have a record of the original prescription or a record of the call in and someone could fairly easily forge a prescription label...

Still, this is inexcusable. I have no idea how this happened but this is a big miss. Rite Aid needs to figure out how to fix this.

Rite Aid's operation keeps getting worse and worse, so I am not holding out much hope.
Though even if that is the case, they could take the existing label/bottle and use that information to contact the doctor's office to request a new copy be sent to them. Since THEY lost the first one, it shouldn't be YOUR job as the customer to fix it!
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Re: Rite Aid Buys Bartell Drugs

Post by Alpha8472 »

Transferring prescription records from one pharmacy to another is either done by a phone call between 2 pharmacists or a fax. You could use printouts of prescription records or put those records on a secure cd or computer website.

Pharmacies cannot rely on labels on prescription bottles as they can be forged.

Pharmacies can contact the doctors for refills. It is just that Rite Aid is understaffed and Corporate does not staff enough employees to handle thousands of prescription transfers all at once. Local small chains are better staffed.
Last edited by Alpha8472 on May 24th, 2021, 3:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Rite Aid Buys Bartell Drugs

Post by TW-Upstate NY »

Alpha8472 wrote: May 24th, 2021, 5:30 am Local small chains are better staffed.
You could say the same for some independents too. There's a small independent pharmacy in Johnstown, NY that has between 6-8 pharmacists on staff and they're always busy. Place has been around forever and has occupied the same corner location for decades. Those are the kind of places you want to bring your business to-not enough of them left.
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Re: Rite Aid Buys Bartell Drugs

Post by marshd1000 »

There is trouble at Bartell Drugs starting with back end integration!

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/l ... d-changes/
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Re: Rite Aid Buys Bartell Drugs

Post by storewanderer »

Of course they had to do the system conversion in the pharmacy, but they really needed to get it right. They have been merged together for how long? Over a year now. It seems like they had plenty of time to get the system conversion right.

Also this is a relatively small number of stores, and there are existing Rite Aid Stores in the area. Rite Aid has well over 100 stores of its own in WA. This Bartell thing was only about 60 stores.

The problem right now is all retail businesses are understaffed and pharmacies are no exception. So I can see how the existing Rite Aids probably had a tough time sending people who knew the Rite Aid system to help with this system conversion. And if that was the case they needed to just dial things down and do these conversions very slowly... even if it was only a few stores a week. And given pharmacy teams are so stretched right now with administering COVID shots, flu shots, COVID tests, in addition to normal duties, it is not a great time to be doing a system conversion unless you really have to. Whatever cost savings moving to the new Rite Aid system was going to realize, is being wiped away for who knows how long due to how they botched this.

I did not hear any pharmacy related complaints like this when CVS took Longs over (heard a lot of front end related complaints... and now you hear a lot of pharmacy complaints due to understaffing) and did not hear pharmacy related complaints when Walgreens took the recent batch of Rite Aid Stores over...

Not that it matters in the overall scheme of things, but I wonder what Rite Aid is going to do to the front end of Bartell. Bartell definitely had an interesting front end mix. However I don't think the Bartell front end was very high volume. Rite Aid's front end has deteriorated significantly over the past couple of years with major SKU cuts, low inventory levels, and fewer promotions. Empty shelves are present even in small 12k square foot stores. The former Payless Stores even after significant downsizing/remodels have taken place now look worse than they did in 1999. The other thing is the high volume Rite Aid stores look the worst. The lower volume stores actually look better. It is like the locations are all getting the same amount of inventory allocated. This is very unlike CVS and Walgreens who stock the high volume stores up very well but have the low volume ones very lightly stocked.
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Re: Rite Aid Buys Bartell Drugs

Post by Romr123 »

RiteAid has been very steady-state here in Michigan--no divestitures, stable store count--and from the outside the stores look good (new logos look quite nice). In the last 45 days they just did a big SKU purge in foods...I got a bunch of 75% off clearance stuff visiting the 5 stores within 3 miles. The selections at the stores don't seem to have recovered and the bigger stores look worse than the 5k sqft inline stores. I'm sure this won't last (the staffs here are, as mentioned, good and relatively stable) though the stress on the pharmacies is obvious (was strongly urged to come back the following day for immunizations, as the vacation-relief pharmacist had been stood up for a couple hours by the pharm tech). Still a far better experience in SEMI than CVS (which seem to teem with scroungy people). Walgreens is definitely the "third" wheel around here, with few, oddly situated stores.
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Re: Rite Aid Buys Bartell Drugs

Post by storewanderer »

Romr123 wrote: August 14th, 2021, 7:55 am RiteAid has been very steady-state here in Michigan--no divestitures, stable store count--and from the outside the stores look good (new logos look quite nice). In the last 45 days they just did a big SKU purge in foods...I got a bunch of 75% off clearance stuff visiting the 5 stores within 3 miles. The selections at the stores don't seem to have recovered and the bigger stores look worse than the 5k sqft inline stores. I'm sure this won't last (the staffs here are, as mentioned, good and relatively stable) though the stress on the pharmacies is obvious (was strongly urged to come back the following day for immunizations, as the vacation-relief pharmacist had been stood up for a couple hours by the pharm tech). Still a far better experience in SEMI than CVS (which seem to teem with scroungy people). Walgreens is definitely the "third" wheel around here, with few, oddly situated stores.
Out west in the larger stores, (standard prototype out west is 17k sq ft vs. 12k sq ft back east but there are some smaller ones out west too; also they are still sitting on quite a few 20k-30k square foot stores), they did a huge SKU purge last year and got out of many slow moving categories (housewares, hardware, sporting goods, electronics, and such) which I understand but now that space is 3-8 aisles worth empty shelves. More recently they have done SKU purges in other categories as well like office supplies (again kind of understand that) and now as you point out food, and this leaves the space with empty shelves. I was expecting them to move into natural foods and more alternative medicine type products but so far there have been no developments on that in the past year.
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