Amazon Pharmacy ready to take over the pharmacy world.

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MrBonita

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Soon Amazon will be offering one hour delivery on prescription drugs. I imagine they will be hiring a ton of pharmacists. Anyone got a foot in the door and let me have a piece of the action?

www.cnbc.com

Amazon adds new 'Amazon Pharmacy' branding to PillPack and promotes its CEO

Amazon is slowly merging the mail-order pharmacy it acquired last year into the fold.
www.cnbc.com www.cnbc.com
Members don't see this ad.
 
The article looses some credibility when they say the WM wants to compete with them. WM is down the ****ter for their pharmacies. Just ask sozetone.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
Man, I don’t know. I’ve already had to call Pillpack because they weren’t able to reliably get a patients psych meds to them within 2 weeks (and it actually seemed like the screwup wasn’t on the patient or provider end for once). I’ll believe it when I see it.
 
radio frequency said:
Man, I don’t know. I’ve already had to call Pillpack because they weren’t able to reliably get a patients psych meds to them within 2 weeks (and it actually seemed like the screwup wasn’t on the patient or provider end for once). I’ll believe it when I see it.
Click to expand...

My interactions with them haven't been the best. The person who wanted to do the transfers was an intern. Per Wisconsin law, you have to complete 2 years of pharmacy school to be an intern. The law is specific. He said he had completed 1.5 years of a 3 year school and that was the same. He actually dared to debate me about Wisconsin law and he doesn't live here. They also didn't tell my dual eligible that they couldn't process their Medicaid only RX.
 
genesis09 said:
My interactions with them haven't been the best. The person who wanted to do the transfers was an intern. Per Wisconsin law, you have to complete 2 years of pharmacy school to be an intern. The law is specific. He said he had completed 1.5 years of a 3 year school and that was the same. He actually dared to debate me about Wisconsin law and he doesn't live here. They also didn't tell my dual eligible that they couldn't process their Medicaid only RX.
Click to expand...

He was in the right. Aren't PillPack pharmacists and interns in New Hampshire? You aren't allowed to dictate their state rules.
 
genesis09 said:
My interactions with them haven't been the best. The person who wanted to do the transfers was an intern. Per Wisconsin law, you have to complete 2 years of pharmacy school to be an intern. The law is specific. He said he had completed 1.5 years of a 3 year school and that was the same. He actually dared to debate me about Wisconsin law and he doesn't live here. They also didn't tell my dual eligible that they couldn't process their Medicaid only RX.
Click to expand...

Is that intern requirement new?
 
Even though the intern was probably working in NH, that intern is an idiot because he was trying to extrapolate Wisconsin law that doesn't even apply to him (LOL @ 1.5/3 is the same as 2 actual years)

Wisconsin Legislature: Chapter Phar 17

docs.legis.wisconsin.gov docs.legis.wisconsin.gov

That statute seems onerous (or you just can't get any credit for paid intern experience until beyond the 2nd year?) as previous regulation stipulated "Any person who has successfully completed the third year (first professional year) in the curriculum of an accredited school or college of pharmacy may apply for registration as an intern in pharmacy for professional experience training." (source)

My limited experience will PillPack employees is these geniuses requesting transfers for Medi-Cal patients a few times (guess they wanted to pay cash?)
 
The reason why I ask is because Wisconsin didn’t require a tech license back when I worked there. I started working as an intern between P1 And P2 years. I was confused by that statement and wondered if the law had changed since I had worked there.
 
Just saw advertisement for amazon rph in Arizona looking for someone with florida license.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Wisconsin doesn't require a license to be a tech or a intern but they are defined. A tech is an unlicensed person. An intern can practice pharmacy. An intern has completed 2 years of pharmacy school. When I get transfers from out of state, I make sure the person receiving it can per Wisconsin law. I had a tech who wanted to do the transfer and she was fine when I requested that the pharmacist do it because of Wisconsin law. If you are doing out of state transfers, you need to obey whatever is the stricter law.

Pharmacy employers can give you the intern title at any time but you can't actually do pharmacist only tasks until the second year has been completed. You can't earn intern hour credit until after completion of 2nd year.

The intern rule is old at least 10 years old.
 
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genesis09 said:
Wisconsin doesn't require a license to be a tech or a intern but they are defined. A tech is an unlicensed person. An intern can practice pharmacy. An intern has completed 2 years of pharmacy school. When I get transfers from out of state, I make sure the person receiving it can per Wisconsin law. I had a tech who wanted to do the transfer and she was fine when I requested that the pharmacist do it because of Wisconsin law. If you are doing out of state transfers, you need to obey whatever is the stricter law.

Pharmacy employers can give you the intern title at any time but you can't actually do pharmacist only tasks until the second year has been completed. You can't earn intern hour credit until after completion of 2nd year.

The intern rule is old at least 10 years old.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that clarificatio.
 
Pill pack likes to ask for transfers by faxing a request for me to contact them. Lol....yea I'm not sitting on hold for 15mins to transfer something out. Had one of their RPhs call and grumpily mention they'd faxed us several times that week about the transfer and didnt seem to understand my position that it's kinda ridiculous to expect the person losing the script to take the time to call it out.

And unless they totally change how pill pack operates, I'm not that worried. My store freaked out a bit a couple years ago when we got hit with a ton of pill pack transfer outs....almost all those people transferred back within a couple of months.
 
genesis09 said:
Wisconsin doesn't require a license to be a tech or a intern but they are defined. A tech is an unlicensed person. An intern can practice pharmacy. An intern has completed 2 years of pharmacy school. When I get transfers from out of state, I make sure the person receiving it can per Wisconsin law. I had a tech who wanted to do the transfer and she was fine when I requested that the pharmacist do it because of Wisconsin law. If you are doing out of state transfers, you need to obey whatever is the stricter law.

Pharmacy employers can give you the intern title at any time but you can't actually do pharmacist only tasks until the second year has been completed. You can't earn intern hour credit until after completion of 2nd year.

The intern rule is old at least 10 years old.
Click to expand...
Delving into whether or not WI would issue someone (who is not in WI) an intern license is a little bit beyond asking whether or not someone holds an intern license in the state where they are currently working.
 
Wickett said:
Pill pack likes to ask for transfers by faxing a request for me to contact them. Lol....yea I'm not sitting on hold for 15mins to transfer something out. Had one of their RPhs call and grumpily mention they'd faxed us several times that week about the transfer and didnt seem to understand my position that it's kinda ridiculous to expect the person losing the script to take the time to call it out.

And unless they totally change how pill pack operates, I'm not that worried. My store freaked out a bit a couple years ago when we got hit with a ton of pill pack transfer outs....almost all those people transferred back within a couple of months.
Click to expand...
This happened at my pharmacy too. About 10 people transferred out but all came back lol
 
MrBonita said:
Soon Amazon will be offering one hour delivery on prescription drugs. I imagine they will be hiring a ton of pharmacists. Anyone got a foot in the door and let me have a piece of the action?

www.cnbc.com

Amazon adds new 'Amazon Pharmacy' branding to PillPack and promotes its CEO

Amazon is slowly merging the mail-order pharmacy it acquired last year into the fold.
www.cnbc.com www.cnbc.com
Click to expand...
I wouldn't be too worried about amazon taking over pharmacy. My experience is that zero patients wanted to get their prescriptions from mail order or delivery from central pharmacies. Unless they start attacking long term care facilities, people prefer personalized care which is the reason why I would think CVS will be a sinking ship if they continue this bs. They're making money now since the stress hasn't gotten to everyone but once that **** hits the fan long enough, people will jump ship.
 
genesis09 said:
If you are doing out of state transfers, you need to obey whatever is the stricter law.
Click to expand...

Incorrect. I only need to obey my own state’s laws. I don’t need to concern myself with the laws of the other state.
 
genesis09 said:
Wisconsin doesn't require a license to be a tech or a intern but they are defined. A tech is an unlicensed person. An intern can practice pharmacy. An intern has completed 2 years of pharmacy school. When I get transfers from out of state, I make sure the person receiving it can per Wisconsin law. I had a tech who wanted to do the transfer and she was fine when I requested that the pharmacist do it because of Wisconsin law. If you are doing out of state transfers, you need to obey whatever is the stricter law.

Pharmacy employers can give you the intern title at any time but you can't actually do pharmacist only tasks until the second year has been completed. You can't earn intern hour credit until after completion of 2nd year.

The intern rule is old at least 10 years old.
Click to expand...

This is completely wrong. Wisconsin law does not define what an intern is in another state. You can't dictate another state's rule. They are a licensed intern in their state so you should perform the transfer. Wisconsin's requirement of 2 years completion of pharmacy school is irrelevant. Texas requires new pharmacist licenses to have obtained 1500 hours of internship hours. Florida requires 2080 hours of internship hours. Are you telling me that Florida pharmacists can't do transfers with Texas pharmacists because they're technically not pharmacists under Florida law? Ridiculous.

By the way, "intern" is a legally recognized title. You can't identify as a pharmacy intern without being licensed as one. If they're licensed as an intern and your state allows transfers with interns, you need to complete the transfer.
 
My wife's doctor sent a prenatal script to Pillpack and the copay was $30. We asked if it could be changed to one that is covered and they said no returns. Lame! Any pharmacy would have returned it for us.
 
mentos said:
My wife's doctor sent a prenatal script to Pillpack and the copay was $30. We asked if it could be changed to one that is covered and they said no returns. Lame! Any pharmacy would have returned it for us.
Click to expand...

I assume it was changed to a credit card? Contest the charge.
 
Pillpack customer service sucks but Amazon's doesn't. I'm sure Amazon will improve customer experience over there.
 
I dont see how this will be profitable for amazon, reimbursements are cut throat and shipping is expensive. On top of this, chains are holding on to their customers very tightly. Pretty sure cvs is losing 0% to pillpack, they have their own service they transfer their patients to when they wanna go to pill pack. Then pill pack wastes time and money trying to get those hopeless transfers.
 
MatCauthon said:
if we received a fax from a pharmacy asking us to call them to give them a transfer it would go straight in the trash can.
Click to expand...
Any time I see the pillpack faxes that's exactly where they go. Why make things any easier for Amazon to take business away from us?
 
MatCauthon said:
not sure what edge amazon has in this cutthroat market. any retail chain can do 1 hour deliveries. Just saw an article that Costco is experimenting with using instacart for same day delivery. Unless amazon can get a bunch of exclusive contracts for high dollar specialty drugs I'm not sure what they are doing in pharmacy. the PBMs have already squeezed all the profits out. I only see amazon succeeding if they make their own supply chain distributor, their own pbm, and their own specialty pharmacy services. all of this will take years to accomplish. even if. they do accomplish it, Cvs already has all this stuff in place and will adapt as well.
Click to expand...
We do same day deliveries. Some times make two deliveries a day. Honestly, even amazon cant compete with local pharmacies on delivering meds unless they can come up with some kind of teleportation mechanism.
 
Isn’t it easier to respond to a fax than a phone call though? I mean you might be busy with they call but with a fax you can respond at your convenience. Couldn’t you just fax the transfer and avoid calling them all together?
 
owlegrad said:
Isn’t it easier to respond to a fax than a phone call though? I mean you might be busy with they call but with a fax you can respond at your convenience. Couldn’t you just fax the transfer and avoid calling them all together?
Click to expand...
You won’t get someone on the phone to transfer the script to the moment you call.
 
VictorOfHungerGames said:
I wouldn't be too worried about amazon taking over pharmacy. My experience is that zero patients wanted to get their prescriptions from mail order or delivery from central pharmacies. Unless they start attacking long term care facilities, people prefer personalized care which is the reason why I would think CVS will be a sinking ship if they continue this bs. They're making money now since the stress hasn't gotten to everyone but once that **** hits the fan long enough, people will jump ship.
Click to expand...
Your experience is with boomers. Mail order's patient portal sucks, and their delivery sucks. Zoomer, Millennials and even X-ers love Amazon. All Amazon has to do is being the same level of performance to drugs as they do with retail.
 
DrVader said:
Your experience is with boomers. Mail order's patient portal sucks, and their delivery sucks. Zoomer, Millennials and even X-ers love Amazon. All Amazon has to do is being the same level of performance to drugs as they do with retail.
Click to expand...
Sure. I could see this argument but how many of these young generations need drugs? Most of these young people will need are antibiotics, birth controls and ciis. You cant make money off of those. Also, not sure if you follow facebook pages on issues with mail order but there are waaaay too many problems including storage and delivery methods that are just lawsuits waiting to happen. Drugs arent toilet papers where you can just order and let sit at your doorstep all day. Same as vegetables. I dont want my vegetables or meats to be mailed or delivered. Im gonna go and pick them up myself haha there are things in life amazon just cant take over.
 
VictorOfHungerGames said:
Sure. I could see this argument but how many of these young generations need drugs? Most of these young people will need are antibiotics, birth controls and ciis. You cant make money off of those. Also, not sure if you follow facebook pages on issues with mail order but there are waaaay too many problems including storage and delivery methods that are just lawsuits waiting to happen. Drugs arent toilet papers where you can just order and let sit at your doorstep all day. Same as vegetables. I dont want my vegetables or meats to be mailed or delivered. Im gonna go and pick them up myself haha there are things in life amazon just cant take over.
Click to expand...
Young people take birth control, ADHDs, anti depression and anti anxiety meds. Go work in a pharmacy in a young area, plenty of business.
 
Antipsychotic meds, lithium, and benztropine, too

None of which generate much income (if oral tabs)
 
This is just good news for pharmacists. Amazon must be hiring.
 
DrVader said:
Young people take birth control, ADHDs, anti depression and anti anxiety meds. Go work in a pharmacy in a young area, plenty of business.
Click to expand...

I never realized how overmedicated people were until I got into pharmacy. What’s even scarier is how many young, well off people are on an antidepressant and anti anxiety med. Makes me feel good that I don’t take anything.
 
DrVader said:
Young people take birth control, ADHDs, anti depression and anti anxiety meds. Go work in a pharmacy in a young area, plenty of business.
Click to expand...
You cant make money with young people in pharmacy. Young people live in the city, urban areas. PBMs reimbursements are almost negative in these heat zones which is why you dont see any more indies in these areas. Money is in medicare/medicaid patients. Just because your script number is high, doesnt mean youre making money. DIR fees and clawbacks alone will kill you in these “young” areas.
 
DrVader said:
Your experience is with boomers. Mail order's patient portal sucks, and their delivery sucks. Zoomer, Millennials and even X-ers love Amazon. All Amazon has to do is being the same level of performance to drugs as they do with retail.
Click to expand...

Prescriptions aren't the same as apparel, electronics, household items etc. Insurance doesn't cost less through mail order than it does in the store. There are no prime day or daily deals on drug prices. Everyone will still have to deal with refills too soon, PAs, manufacturer backorders and everything else annoying in retail pharmacy. No one will pay for Amazon prime to get their drugs in two days, that offers no benefit over the free same day delivery that the chains offer.
 
owlegrad said:
Agreed. So don't call, just fax. Are we saying the same thing?
Click to expand...

The fax provides no info on the RPh it would be transferred to. You would have to call, wait on hold, etc in order to properly complete the transfer.
 
VictorOfHungerGames said:
You cant make money with young people in pharmacy. Young people live in the city, urban areas. PBMs reimbursements are almost negative in these heat zones which is why you dont see any more indies in these areas. Money is in medicare/medicaid patients. Just because your script number is high, doesnt mean youre making money. DIR fees and clawbacks alone will kill you in these “young” areas.
Click to expand...
Amazon can place pressure on PBMs in ways that CVS or Walgreens can't. They will buy or push out whoever they need too. They are a 800lb gorilla.
 
As someone working in an independent, dear god I hate Pillpack. They keep calling every once in a while telling us to reverse a prescription because of various reasons they make up such as "They want to transfer" or "They doctor sent us this script but we can't bill it because you guys still have it billed.". I immediately hang up cause it is usually straight BS cause they ask us to reverse prescriptions that the patient literally just picked up like 1-2 days ago or are patients that are like 70+ years old, doesn't speak any English at all and are frequent customers around the store in general.

We also have to frequently go through out refills due soon and bill it as soon as possible and call the patient to pick up because once Pillpack gets a hold of the prescription, they are doing anything to can lying straight up to not let go.
Had an interaction that went as follows: New technician accidentally reverses a script because they took the call > Pt comes in later that day to come pick up but we can't get it back through cause Pillpack > Call Pillpack and they said they would transfer us to a pharmacist and proceeds to hang up after 5 minutes of holding > 2nd call pharmacist told us they don't have the authority to reverse scripts, puts us on hold and hangs up >3rd call we asked to speak with a supervising pharmacist and they said they don't know how to reverse the billing, puts us on hold and hangs up > 4th call they told us they already sent out the prescription so they can't and hangs up
 
^Sounds about right for an enterprise operated by amazon. The one factor none of us are taking into account is that amazon is literally willing to hemorrhage money in order to kill competition. Once that happens, they literally step on and devour the carcass of their former competitors.
 
projektreverb said:
^Sounds about right for an enterprise operated by amazon. The one factor none of us are taking into account is that amazon is literally willing to hemorrhage money in order to kill competition. Once that happens, they literally step on and devour the carcass of their former competitors.
Click to expand...
Hassan minaj covered this a few months ago. I stopped using amazon since. Literally stopped ordering from them haha
 
angelsplight said:
As someone working in an independent, dear god I hate Pillpack. They keep calling every once in a while telling us to reverse a prescription because of various reasons they make up such as "They want to transfer" or "They doctor sent us this script but we can't bill it because you guys still have it billed.". I immediately hang up cause it is usually straight BS cause they ask us to reverse prescriptions that the patient literally just picked up like 1-2 days ago or are patients that are like 70+ years old, doesn't speak any English at all and are frequent customers around the store in general.

We also have to frequently go through out refills due soon and bill it as soon as possible and call the patient to pick up because once Pillpack gets a hold of the prescription, they are doing anything to can lying straight up to not let go.
Had an interaction that went as follows: New technician accidentally reverses a script because they took the call > Pt comes in later that day to come pick up but we can't get it back through cause Pillpack > Call Pillpack and they said they would transfer us to a pharmacist and proceeds to hang up after 5 minutes of holding > 2nd call pharmacist told us they don't have the authority to reverse scripts, puts us on hold and hangs up >3rd call we asked to speak with a supervising pharmacist and they said they don't know how to reverse the billing, puts us on hold and hangs up > 4th call they told us they already sent out the prescription so they can't and hangs up
Click to expand...

Just got a flashback to the last time I chatted with Amazon's customer service. Instead of hanging up on you, they just deal-in a new customer service rep every time you type a message. They greet you with "Hello, (Jim) has stepped away but I am here to assist you. Please allow me a moment to catch up on your conversation". Literally every 90 sec and new one taps in. It would've been comical if it weren't infuriating.
 
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