Walgreens plans centralized robotic pharmacies

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Walgreens plans centralized robotic pharmacies

Post by Brian Lutz »

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/30/walgree ... ities.html

Walgreens is making plans to create up to 22 centralized pharmacy fulfillment centers across the country where prescriptions can be filled by robotic automated systems, which will then be sent to individual stores. The claim is that a robot can fill 300 prescriptions an hour, which roughly matches what a typically staffed in-store pharmacy can do in a day. Obviously this won't completely replace actual pharmacists, but since it seems like a lot of pharmacies have experienced high attrition as of late this should keep the workload for the remaining staff down and free them up for other things.
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Re: Walgreens plans centralized robotic pharmacies

Post by norcalriteaidclerk »

Interesting move.I've noticed that it appears that Walgreens is having operational issues locally:roughly half of the pharmacy departments in the Sac Valley locations are only staying open until 7pm on weekdays,and the pharmacy at 6199 Sunrise in Citrus Heights is temporarily closed(store is still open until 10pm daily).At one point last month,a different CH location that regularly has a 24-hour front end(6144 Dewey which also had a 24-hour pharmacy until spring 2019)had to temporarily cut both front end(8am-midnight)and pharmacy hours(9am-7pm)while numerous vacant positions were resolved.While Walgreens has waged a spirited battle against both Rite Aid and Longs/CVS over the years they have been also been dogged by location choices that haven't worked out(6 Sacramento locations closed between December 2016 and June 2020,one is now a dialysis clinic,another is now a WSS shoe store,and 3 others are now Dollar Tree)and haven't opened any new locations locally in roughly a decade.This may or may not ease the stress on WAG pharmacy employees,but I do find it interesting that half the locations now have shorter pharmacy hours than their competitors.
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Re: Walgreens plans centralized robotic pharmacies

Post by storewanderer »

norcalriteaidclerk wrote: March 30th, 2022, 1:12 pm Interesting move.I've noticed that it appears that Walgreens is having operational issues locally:roughly half of the pharmacy departments in the Sac Valley locations are only staying open until 7pm on weekdays,and the pharmacy at 6199 Sunrise in Citrus Heights is temporarily closed(store is still open until 10pm daily).At one point last month,a different CH location that regularly has a 24-hour front end(6144 Dewey which also had a 24-hour pharmacy until spring 2019)had to temporarily cut both front end(8am-midnight)and pharmacy hours(9am-7pm)while numerous vacant positions were resolved.While Walgreens has waged a spirited battle against both Rite Aid and Longs/CVS over the years they have been also been dogged by location choices that haven't worked out(6 Sacramento locations closed between December 2016 and June 2020,one is now a dialysis clinic,another is now a WSS shoe store,and 3 others are now Dollar Tree)and haven't opened any new locations locally in roughly a decade.This may or may not ease the stress on WAG pharmacy employees,but I do find it interesting that half the locations now have shorter pharmacy hours than their competitors.
I feel like I've heard of this robotic central fill pharmacy program before. And I think it may have been Rite Aid in the 90's.


What is funny is back in the 90's and 00's when Walgreens was doing serious expansion one of their big selling points was having longer store hours and longer pharmacy hours than competitors. It was a huge thing in the Walgreens culture to always be there for the customers when they needed them to be and that was why they had standard store hours of 8 AM to 10 PM every day for store and pharmacy (except some 10 AM to 6 PM pharmacy hours Sundays in slower stores).
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Re: Walgreens plans centralized robotic pharmacies

Post by storewanderer »

Article on Rite Aid and central fill.
https://www.scu.edu/ethics/focus-areas/ ... id-crisis/

Interesting article.
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Re: Walgreens plans centralized robotic pharmacies

Post by Romr123 »

Not sure that RA was doing centralized fill at that point--in the article it looked more like it was computerized Rx warehousing. I do recall that Walgreens asked me (when dealing with my parents' pharmacy in 2016-ish) whether I'd consent to some sort of a centralized fill/pick up at location program. Don't see that at CVS/Rite Aid (though I don't have anything on autofill--I call in refills myself).
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Re: Walgreens plans centralized robotic pharmacies

Post by mbz321 »

norcalriteaidclerk wrote: March 30th, 2022, 1:12 pm Interesting move.I've noticed that it appears that Walgreens is having operational issues locally
I don't think it's a local issue. All three pharmacy chains seem to be having major issues. If you read some of the Walgreens/CVS subReddits, there are so many frustrated employee experiences almost daily. (The Rite Aid subreddit is pretty quiet, but I have seen a few locations in my area that were once high volume 24 hour locations cut their hours back to 9PM weekday closing times and like 5 or 6PM on the weekends!)
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Re: Walgreens plans centralized robotic pharmacies

Post by storewanderer »

mbz321 wrote: March 31st, 2022, 8:15 pm

I don't think it's a local issue. All three pharmacy chains seem to be having major issues. If you read some of the Walgreens/CVS subReddits, there are so many frustrated employee experiences almost daily. (The Rite Aid subreddit is pretty quiet, but I have seen a few locations in my area that were once high volume 24 hour locations cut their hours back to 9PM weekday closing times and like 5 or 6PM on the weekends!)
The amount of upset and employee burnout at the pharmacy chains over the past year is unreal. Those Walgreens and CVS Reddits have more people complaining than the Wal Mart employee reddit (which has a fair share of complaining going on too but not quite at the level, plus you would expect less turnover with the pharmacy areas as those pharmacists and techs are licensed vs. most over on the Wal Mart reddit seem to be in not licensed positions).

Rite Aid is having similar issues to the other chains. I think because Rite Aids are generally less busy to begin with they have not burnt through quite as much staff as CVS and Walgreens have in the past year but if a not busy Rite Aid store with 6 pharmacy staff loses 3 people it is more painful than if a busy Walgreens store with 20 pharmacy staff loses 6 people.
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Re: Walgreens plans centralized robotic pharmacies

Post by Alpha8472 »

Walmart pharmacies tend to do less prescriptions than CVS or Walgreens. A typical Wamart might do 160 prescriptions in a day. This is nothing. As far as I know, Walmart does not use any robots or central fill. The numbers do not support the cost of a robot.

The issue is that Walmart's pharmacy employees are paid much less than CVS or Walgreens. A pharmacy cashier might make less than a McDonald's employee working at the McDonald's in Walmart. In fact, a friend of mine who is a pharmacist said a pharmacy technician at a Walmart in the San Francisco Bay Area worked at McDonald's and the Walmart pharmacy to make ends meet. She saw the lady serve customers at McDonald's and then go over to the pharmacy to fill prescriptions when her McDonald's job was over for the day.

Walmart may pay pharmacy technicians 10 dollars less than Walgreens. However, since the employees are paid less, Walmart has better staffing at their pharmacies. It is up to the pharmacy manager at each Walmart pharmacy to decide how many employees to schedule. The more employees, the less bonus the manager makes. So if the manager is greedy, the manager will schedule less people and make the few employees work like slaves. There is a budget and the district managers pressure the managers to cut costs to increase bonuses for managers and district managers.

The exception to this are the Walmart Neighborhood Market pharmacies. These pharmacies do very little business and yet they were open 9 to 9 PM weekdays and open on weekends. From 7 PM to 9 PM you would see the pharmacy employees talking and doing no work. They literally get paid to do nothing. They have no prescriptions to fill. A typical Walmart Neighborhood Market might fill 50 prescriptions a day. The rest of the time they sit and talk.

Walmart corporate knows this and just keeps those pharmacies open for show. Meanwhile across town a full sized Walmart store has a busier pharmacy that closes 2 hours earlier at 7 PM and the employees are understaffed and overworked. They can barely get their work done before closing time.

At the end of April some Walmart pharmacies are going back to regular hours of 9 to 9 PM on weekdays including the not very busy Neighborhood Market pharmacies. However, many supercenter pharmacies are staying at 9 to 7 PM. This really does not make sense. Busier pharmacies have shorter hours to save money, but Neighborhood Markets get pharmacies with longer hours.

The idea must be that customer traffic at Walmart Neighborhood Markets is so bad that they are keeping the pharmacies open later to try to draw more customers to the store.
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Re: Walgreens plans centralized robotic pharmacies

Post by Greggo »

The Walgreens locations in Houston and Austin have had signs up for months now warning that some medications are being filled (or will be filled) at central fill facilities. I assume this is happening at their North Texas distribution center near Waxahachie but I don’t know that for sure. Also … H‑E‑B has been doing routine refills at its central fill facility in San Antonio for years now. It tells you on the printout and label. If you want same day you have to call the individual pharmacy.
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Re: Walgreens plans centralized robotic pharmacies

Post by storewanderer »

Alpha8472 wrote: March 31st, 2022, 10:14 pm

The exception to this are the Walmart Neighborhood Market pharmacies. These pharmacies do very little business and yet they were open 9 to 9 PM weekdays and open on weekends. From 7 PM to 9 PM you would see the pharmacy employees talking and doing no work. They literally get paid to do nothing. They have no prescriptions to fill. A typical Walmart Neighborhood Market might fill 50 prescriptions a day. The rest of the time they sit and talk.

Walmart corporate knows this and just keeps those pharmacies open for show. Meanwhile across town a full sized Walmart store has a busier pharmacy that closes 2 hours earlier at 7 PM and the employees are understaffed and overworked. They can barely get their work done before closing time.

The idea must be that customer traffic at Walmart Neighborhood Markets is so bad that they are keeping the pharmacies open later to try to draw more customers to the store.
Many grocery store pharmacies are open until 8 PM or 9 PM (Save Mart, Safeway, and Smiths) so Wal Mart Neighborhood Markets likely feel the need to keep the pharmacy open later in order to be competitive with those stores. That is not the best performing block of stores so they cannot afford to offer lower service levels (like fewer pharmacy hours) than Kroger, it just loses them a few more customers. Is it worth staying open from 7 PM to 9 PM just to get a few customers served? Probably not. But if the pharmacy is efficient and refill requests flow in at the right time the pharmacy staff can use that 7 PM to 9 PM period to get caught up on all of that and other tasks like inventory, etc. and it should be helpful for the overall operation of the pharmacy.

It is too bad they can't have the Neighborhood Markets help do fills for the busier Supercenters then transport the fills to the Supercenter but obviously that is not a secure idea.
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