rxstudent297
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- Apr 13, 2021
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Hi everyone I’m a Graduating pharmacy student with second thoughts about going towards community. I play a huge role in NCPA and my state board pharmacy association but now a little bit unsure where to go.
Ever since I was little; I had a passion for pharmacy due to it having the right combination of business and health and I can open up my own practice. I honestly think pharmacists can play an important role in helping the community as we are the most accessible healthcare professionals. Recently as I get surrounded by more community pharmacy owners and pharmacists, I’m having second thoughts about the pursuit of ownership and was hoping to get your opinions and advice esp with the topics below.
P.S I’m just a pharmacy student that needs some guidance and wanted to see what people had to say about my thoughts. I don’t mean to belittle anyone in any shape or form because this is my profession as well. Also, I’m not drowned in loans.
Ever since I was little; I had a passion for pharmacy due to it having the right combination of business and health and I can open up my own practice. I honestly think pharmacists can play an important role in helping the community as we are the most accessible healthcare professionals. Recently as I get surrounded by more community pharmacy owners and pharmacists, I’m having second thoughts about the pursuit of ownership and was hoping to get your opinions and advice esp with the topics below.
- The profession: No one cares. All day in group chats pharmacists just complain and do nothing about It. No one does anything for advocacy for their profession even the simple things such as sending an email or writing a letter esp in the community sector. Like think about it we are the most accessible health care providers, patients see us 4x more than their prescribers yet we never ask for their support.
- Respect: this is going to push some buttons but why are we needed? I’m in NYC where pharmacy owners call pharmacist “bodies.” All the pharmacist does is fill without checking any interactions, they don’t care if it’s controlled as long as it's an e-script and the correct medication written got dispensed. their main reason is it’s not their fault. It’s the providers. LIKE BE HONEST HOW MANY PATIENTS IN A DAY DO YOU EDUCATE OR EVEN TALK ABOUT THE MED ABOUT? 80% of the meds I see ppl just verify and the patients get it through delivery JUST LIKE a MAIL ORDER!! People use the excuse mail order cost the government money due to filling unwanted meds but so do you guys, if the patient has Medicaid or Medicare you keep refilling rescue inhalers and other medications and send an ELECTRONIC REFILL REQUEST FOR EVERY MEDICATION and then these pharmacists publicly complain about DIR fee’s or even getting paid $40 an hour. (Also please don’t say PA’s or even obvious mistakes on sigs because even a tech can figure those out)
- I even see pharmacist compete with each other in the wrong way where they are paying their patients 25% of their medications but don’t dispense it or even giving them bounty/soap/toilet paper/pots/pans and we all know who these pharmacies are yet no one wants to report them to OPD.
- One personal experience is the doctor sends a patient’s metformin with 5 refills to the wrong pharmacy and we do blister packs for a patient. For the last 3 months, we can’t fill the patient’s metformin in the blister pack because every time we ask them to reverse the claim the pharmacy said they sent it out by delivery
- When NYS was announcing fee for service all these pop-up scamming pharmacies began trying to open
- Sustainability: Has anyone seen the NCPA financials about 25% of pharmacists are operating at a loss. It’ a high revenue business but low profit I know there is CPESN which I believe strongly in but be honest how many owners are members of it or even NCPA or let alone their state board pharmacy association. The DIR fees are killing the business and not to mention in NYS we were promised Fee for service which got delayed for a month and now for two years. Even with the flu vaccines being a 40$ profit margin all the vaccine doses are going to the chains.
P.S I’m just a pharmacy student that needs some guidance and wanted to see what people had to say about my thoughts. I don’t mean to belittle anyone in any shape or form because this is my profession as well. Also, I’m not drowned in loans.