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We all can agree that without profits, pharmacists will not get paid as well. I agree with several of the people on this board including jeddevil that there is a moderate demand for pharmacists right now all over the nation but lets take a look at the future of pharmacy. Before i begin my rant, i just want to say that this is not a pissing match but rather a collection of links.
The first few links are related to how pharmacists are being hurt by the new medicare part D program. One of the best payment forms out there are by medicaid and medicare. Most pharmacies do not make money from brand name drugs because insurance reembursement pay about what the pharmacy pays for it (they know that we buy the drugs in bulk). We may make a few bucks here or there that we easily lose it to supplies such as labels, vials, and staff. We make most of our money from medicaid (which reemburses about 5 dollar profession fee per prescription for generics) and medicare. The new Medicare part D plan totally ruined profits even more as President Bush attacked pharmacists accusing them of inflating prices. Here are some of the articles relating to that issue.
http://www.ncpanet.org/news_press/enews_resources/ncpa_presidents_response_to_bush.shtml
"The average pharmacy makes only 2-3 cents on every dollar. Your cuts may erase even this small profit and cause 40 percent of the nations independent community pharmacies10,000 small business pharmaciesto close. "
http://kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=35960
"Pharmacists are losing money under the Medicare prescription drug benefit because of slow and inadequate payments from drug plans, a group of pharmacists from Texas told Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser, in a meeting at the White House last week, the New York Times reports. Many independent pharmacies might have to close because of the payment problems, the pharmacists said."
http://www.aphanet.org/AM/Template.cfm?Template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=4881
The following link is from the NYT. The article concerns mail order and how it hurt profits for Rite Aid in the year 2004. A lot of insurances are requiring that many of their patients do mail order for chronic medications such as medco, the auto industry, and so on with many other insurances looking into it. In fact, a lot of chains in response to this threat are opening their own pbms. Do keep in mind that for most pharmacies, chronic medications are about 60 percent of our prescriptions including lipitor, neurontin, zocor, metformin, birth controls, etc.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE4D91630F93BA3575AC0A9629C8B63&pagewanted=print
The next few links relate to how robots will affect the profession. We can all agree that robots are the future of retail pharmacy. They are cheap (they pay for themselves by relieving staffing costs, think about freeing up pharmacists and technician time) and will be reliable and more accurate in the future. I remember jeddevil saying that it will not replace the pharmacist, only pharmacy technicians. That is true as nothing will replace a pharmacist in his knowledge of drugs. However this does not mean that it will not RELIEVE the shortage of pharmacists.
Here are some examples. . . back then, we keep track of a patients profile through cards. Now we have computers that can help us in DUR and organize our prescriptions. Obviously this saves time for a pharmacist allowing him to do more. Sure technology cannot do everything that a pharmacist can do but IT does free up a pharmacist to do more. With online e prescribing, robotics that can fill and dispense a drug once you type in the information, machines that can now take refill orders, and be a cashier, pharmacists are now free to take in phone calls and do more counseling. This will relieve the shortage of pharmacist by a great degree imo.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3374/is_17_26/ai_n8590425
"When I calculated the cost of a part-time pharmacist and the cost of ScriptPro's robot, automation was clearly the way to go. Since then, salaries for pharmacy staff have increased," said Boehler. "The hourly cost of a hilly supported robot is about one-fourth the hourly cost of a pharmacist. When we implement a ScriptPro robot instead of adding a part-time pharmacist, we get a 4-to-1 payback."
The robot in that store, he said, enabled Happy Harry's to buy about two years before we had to add another pharmacist," despite steadily increasing prescription volumes in the store.
In some units, he said, that has meant not only a reduction in the need for technician hours, but also a reduction of eight hours to 16 hours a week in pharmacist overtime and fill-in hours.
http://www.g4tv.com/techtvvault/features/40745/Robots_Replacing_Human_Pharmacists.html
http://www.scriptpro.com/news/falkspharmacy.shtml
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9602/prescript_robot/index.html
In the end, this all sums up to one thing. The future of pharmacy is consulting. I dont know why a lot of people are afraid of robots. I certainly hate to think that I get paid 50 an hour just so i can count tables in 5. I know a lot of us hate it when people think of pharmacy as a degree you can get online in 6 months. From the back of a matchbook too
The first few links are related to how pharmacists are being hurt by the new medicare part D program. One of the best payment forms out there are by medicaid and medicare. Most pharmacies do not make money from brand name drugs because insurance reembursement pay about what the pharmacy pays for it (they know that we buy the drugs in bulk). We may make a few bucks here or there that we easily lose it to supplies such as labels, vials, and staff. We make most of our money from medicaid (which reemburses about 5 dollar profession fee per prescription for generics) and medicare. The new Medicare part D plan totally ruined profits even more as President Bush attacked pharmacists accusing them of inflating prices. Here are some of the articles relating to that issue.
http://www.ncpanet.org/news_press/enews_resources/ncpa_presidents_response_to_bush.shtml
"The average pharmacy makes only 2-3 cents on every dollar. Your cuts may erase even this small profit and cause 40 percent of the nations independent community pharmacies10,000 small business pharmaciesto close. "
http://kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=35960
"Pharmacists are losing money under the Medicare prescription drug benefit because of slow and inadequate payments from drug plans, a group of pharmacists from Texas told Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser, in a meeting at the White House last week, the New York Times reports. Many independent pharmacies might have to close because of the payment problems, the pharmacists said."
http://www.aphanet.org/AM/Template.cfm?Template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=4881
The following link is from the NYT. The article concerns mail order and how it hurt profits for Rite Aid in the year 2004. A lot of insurances are requiring that many of their patients do mail order for chronic medications such as medco, the auto industry, and so on with many other insurances looking into it. In fact, a lot of chains in response to this threat are opening their own pbms. Do keep in mind that for most pharmacies, chronic medications are about 60 percent of our prescriptions including lipitor, neurontin, zocor, metformin, birth controls, etc.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE4D91630F93BA3575AC0A9629C8B63&pagewanted=print
The next few links relate to how robots will affect the profession. We can all agree that robots are the future of retail pharmacy. They are cheap (they pay for themselves by relieving staffing costs, think about freeing up pharmacists and technician time) and will be reliable and more accurate in the future. I remember jeddevil saying that it will not replace the pharmacist, only pharmacy technicians. That is true as nothing will replace a pharmacist in his knowledge of drugs. However this does not mean that it will not RELIEVE the shortage of pharmacists.
Here are some examples. . . back then, we keep track of a patients profile through cards. Now we have computers that can help us in DUR and organize our prescriptions. Obviously this saves time for a pharmacist allowing him to do more. Sure technology cannot do everything that a pharmacist can do but IT does free up a pharmacist to do more. With online e prescribing, robotics that can fill and dispense a drug once you type in the information, machines that can now take refill orders, and be a cashier, pharmacists are now free to take in phone calls and do more counseling. This will relieve the shortage of pharmacist by a great degree imo.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3374/is_17_26/ai_n8590425
"When I calculated the cost of a part-time pharmacist and the cost of ScriptPro's robot, automation was clearly the way to go. Since then, salaries for pharmacy staff have increased," said Boehler. "The hourly cost of a hilly supported robot is about one-fourth the hourly cost of a pharmacist. When we implement a ScriptPro robot instead of adding a part-time pharmacist, we get a 4-to-1 payback."
The robot in that store, he said, enabled Happy Harry's to buy about two years before we had to add another pharmacist," despite steadily increasing prescription volumes in the store.
In some units, he said, that has meant not only a reduction in the need for technician hours, but also a reduction of eight hours to 16 hours a week in pharmacist overtime and fill-in hours.
http://www.g4tv.com/techtvvault/features/40745/Robots_Replacing_Human_Pharmacists.html
http://www.scriptpro.com/news/falkspharmacy.shtml
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9602/prescript_robot/index.html
In the end, this all sums up to one thing. The future of pharmacy is consulting. I dont know why a lot of people are afraid of robots. I certainly hate to think that I get paid 50 an hour just so i can count tables in 5. I know a lot of us hate it when people think of pharmacy as a degree you can get online in 6 months. From the back of a matchbook too
