"The academy cannot sustain more than 140 schools much longer"

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https://www.ajpe.org/content/ajpe/early/2020/06/16/ajpe8136.full.pdf

New submission to AJPE on the viability of pharmacy schools. What's 2020 enrollment looking like for those of you in the academy?
Many predict that it may take 5-10 years to correct this. First, we need to work on controlling, or abolishing PBMs, that rob us of reimbursements. Apparently, they have been unfairly reimbursing hospitals as well as retail pharmacies. Then we need to get these schools to shut down. Once there is surplus of profit, job creation will follow.

CVS just dropped Omnicare due to getting caught fraudulently billing medicare/medicaid. This is good news. Monopolization of pharmacy needs to be stopped.
 
Many predict that it may take 5-10 years to correct this. First, we need to work on controlling, or abolishing PBMs, that rob us of reimbursements. Apparently, they have been unfairly reimbursing hospitals as well as retail pharmacies. Then we need to get these schools to shut down. Once there is surplus of profit, job creation will follow.

CVS just dropped Omnicare due to getting caught fraudulently billing medicare/medicaid. This is good news. Monopolization of pharmacy needs to be stopped.
Let me reprioritize that for you:
1. Close schools
2. Fix reimbursement
3. Create jobs

Fixing reimbursement first is problematic for two reasons:

a) Increased reimbursement doesn't mean increased $ in the hands of employees or more jobs, especially when you have an excess supply of 15,000 pharmacists each year driving down pay

b) Increased reimbursement, if it somehow increases pay or job opportunities, will only serve as VALIDATION for schools to continue fillng their seats with/graduating as many pharmacists as possible because they know they will get high paying jobs after graduation. This will lead to even MORE pre-pharms applying to pharmacy school which is not what the profession needs.
 
CVS just dropped Omnicare due to getting caught fraudulently billing medicare/medicaid. This is good news. Monopolization of pharmacy needs to be stopped.

Really? I didn’t see anything on google about this.
 
The Captain Obviouses in academia are finally catching on now that they realize it might cost them their jobs.

The clinical faculty perhaps, but the reaction from academia is a bit more nuanced than job losses. The majority of the non-clinical faculty love this state of affairs as undergraduates are a chore. The tenured research faculty who are sponsored projects funded are absolutely delighted that those 9-month barbarians are leaving which means less thankless class time and more quality time with graduate student development and laboratory administration. But the senior clinical faculty have known even before I was a graduate student that this day would come (and we had insider information at my graduate school such that it was impossible to not know).

There's definitely a Time Enough At Last vibe to the self-congratulations. I'm not immune either to the jubilation, the risk-reward of teaching has definitely changed over the years to be very unfavorable. There's diamonds in the rough, but I find that most of the candidates and even residents are just putting in time and do not work even to a mediocre level of competency.
 
Really? I didn’t see anything on google about this.
 
Let me reprioritize that for you:
1. Close schools
2. Fix reimbursement
3. Create jobs

Fixing reimbursement first is problematic for two reasons:

a) Increased reimbursement doesn't mean increased $ in the hands of employees or more jobs, especially when you have an excess supply of 15,000 pharmacists each year driving down pay

b) Increased reimbursement, if it somehow increases pay or job opportunities, will only serve as VALIDATION for schools to continue fillng their seats with/graduating as many pharmacists as possible because they know they will get high paying jobs after graduation. This will lead to even MORE pre-pharms applying to pharmacy school which is not what the profession needs.
Your list is not realistic. Closing down schools will take time. Probably years. Fixing reimbursement problem can happen as soon as next year. It's already happening actually in some states. The big showdown would be the Arkansas case in October and if the hearing goes in our favor, laws will be enforced starting next year.

The scarcity of jobs is due to bottlenecking profit. Number of scripts have gone up each year yet unfair reimbursement have worsened, driving down pharmacist and tech hours. The PBMs and insurance companies have hit record high profits. Many would ask, "why do we have less hours when we are filling more scripts?". We need to fix reimbursements first so we can start getting the jobs back.

Schools will eventually have to close down regardless to find an equilibrium since the growth of schools exponentially exceeded the growth of profession.
 

Ah pure speculation then. Got it.
 
Ah pure speculation then. Got it.
Speculation at this point. At least publicly. A friend just told me that he got laid off from Omnicare. He's the one who told me about CVS dropping Omnicare and sent me the article. He was a director at one of the LTC in North Texas branch. I'm gonna say he has more insider information than most people.
 
Interestingly, the author is from South University School of Pharmacy, which ranked #114 of all pharmacy schools.
 
I just read the whole article and he does say that jobs is most important but the short term solution for him is to attract more students...lol.... but he does say not to lower standards....it's just a never ending crap show.
 
They just rebranded “clinical pharmacy”, “MTM” into “provider status”. They will have another buzz word soon to get the crowd all excited.
It was pharmaceutical care when I was in school
 
My favorite line from the article:

" Some schools might be tempted to meet enrollment targets by lowering admission standards "
(https://www.ajpe.org/content/ajpe/early/2020/06/16/ajpe8136.full.pdf)

"Might"..LOL

If you can sign a student loan you can enter Pharmacy school, but this is not a lowering of standards because cursive letters are hard and show true intellectual capacity, right?
 
Let me reprioritize that for you:
1. Close schools
2. Fix reimbursement
3. Create jobs

Fixing reimbursement first is problematic for two reasons:

a) Increased reimbursement doesn't mean increased $ in the hands of employees or more jobs, especially when you have an excess supply of 15,000 pharmacists each year driving down pay

b) Increased reimbursement, if it somehow increases pay or job opportunities, will only serve as VALIDATION for schools to continue fillng their seats with/graduating as many pharmacists as possible because they know they will get high paying jobs after graduation. This will lead to even MORE pre-pharms applying to pharmacy school which is not what the profession needs.
How can we close schools? I've heard that CVS and big corporations fund the opening of schools so they will always have a surplus of pharmacists. I don't remember where I read this and how accurate it is
 
How can we close schools? I've heard that CVS and big corporations fund the opening of schools so they will always have a surplus of pharmacists. I don't remember where I read this and how accurate it is
1. Convince pre-pharms to not apply
2. Do not precept IPPE or APPE students
3. Do not join/pay membership dues in any of APhA, ACCP, ACPE, etc.
4. Convince other practicing pharmacists to turn a cold shoulder on students and academia
5. If involved with schools/recruiting, implement recruiting events such as "shadow an uber driver pharmacist day"
 
How can we close schools? I've heard that CVS and big corporations fund the opening of schools so they will always have a surplus of pharmacists. I don't remember where I read this and how accurate it is
I remember that also.
You also need to reform student loans.It is no coincidence that as ease of restrictions on student loans decreased enrollment increased and tuition skyrocket.
 
I take students but am honest with them about the profession at this point.

The schools are not honest and in turn teach ethics classes.

Its not my fight at this point. I've got more pressing issues such as PBM abuses. But the young people need to fight for minimum competency requirements such as a PCAT and a pre grad GPA of some standard. These schools are scraping the barrel just to fill classes and keep the doors open. A lot of the schools don't even require a PCAT now. When I was in school if your PCAT was less than 60 the school wouldn't even look at you.

I have absolutely no confidence that academia will do the right thing(in spite of teaching ethics), that students will fight for the profession, or that PBM's will be reigned in.
 
My favorite line from the article:

" Some schools might be tempted to meet enrollment targets by lowering admission standards "
(https://www.ajpe.org/content/ajpe/early/2020/06/16/ajpe8136.full.pdf)

"Might"..LOL

If you can sign a student loan you can enter Pharmacy school, but this is not a lowering of standards because cursive letters are hard and show true intellectual capacity, right?

They no longer teach cursive in some elementary schools, so for some kids cursive is hard.

How can we close schools? I've heard that CVS and big corporations fund the opening of schools so they will always have a surplus of pharmacists. I don't remember where I read this and how accurate it is

Yup they are in bed with each other along with the boards of pharmacy. It's all greed and corruption.
 
CVS just dropped Omnicare due to getting caught fraudulently billing medicare/medicaid. This is good news. Monopolization of pharmacy needs to be stopped.

I thought CVS owned Omnicare, how can they "drop" them?

Seeing your comment generated laughter and furious anger. I still remember the faculty members at EVERY school spouting this nonsense years ago to trick me into this dead field.

Yes, while the name has changed "provider status" has been promised since at least the 70's (possibly longer.) Even in the 80's when I went to school, my class was smart enough to realize it was all hogwash and wasn't going to happen. It could have happened, but our associations were too weak/corrupt/ignorent/whatever, so it wasn't ever going to happen .

Short of developing syncope I do not see how anyone can be “bad” at sticking someone with a needle. Try not to miss, try not to hit the bone, and maybe try not to stick yourself with the needle. For gods sake do NOT recap the needle, just toss it in the sharps container. There is literally nothing to it. The needle does most of the work.

Good advice. Hitting a bone isn't that big of a deal, as long as the injector doesn't freak out, the injectee won't even know it. Bad injectors are someone with early stage Parkinson's or similar disorder.
 
CVS just dropped Omnicare due to getting caught fraudulently billing medicare/medicaid. This is good news. Monopolization of pharmacy needs to be stopped.

Link? It still says it's a CVS company on the website.
 
Link? It still says it's a CVS company on the website.
Well, I may have misspoke. I didn't mean they already dropped them but are getting ready to. Like I said on the earlier reply, someone I know was let go from Omnicare and according to him, it was due to CVS wanting to get rid of Omnicare. Inside info so obviously we probably won't hear about it until things are official.
 
Speculation at this point. At least publicly. A friend just told me that he got laid off from Omnicare. He's the one who told me about CVS dropping Omnicare and sent me the article. He was a director at one of the LTC in North Texas branch. I'm gonna say he has more insider information than most people.

How does a pharmacy director get laid off? If anything they're probably the last ones to go.
 
How does a pharmacy director get laid off? If anything they're probably the last ones to go.

Because they get paid the most. That makes you the most expendable. Just find some pharmacist with experience and pay them $30k less than the old director.
 
How does a pharmacy director get laid off? If anything they're probably the last ones to go.
In any organization, middle management (managers, associate directors, directors) are the most expendable positions because you make enough money such that you have a target on your back. The staff pharmacists at the grunt level who are making the least amount of money might not be getting raises and might even be taking annual pay cuts or what have you, but they are the ones "doing the work" so unless that production can be substituted with something else (even cheaper labor, technology etc.) they are safe in times of budget cuts. Middle management, on the other hand, are usually just people managers so they represent fat that can be trimmed - for example in the retail setting combining some variety of the district manager/regional manager/market director positions, or in pharma eliminating some variety of the senior manager/associate director/director positions. It's just that the vast majority of pharmacists have not climbed the corporate ladder and therefore are not privvy to this information because it is not publicized, unlike the stuff that goes on at the ground level. I have noticed though that the new trend is that more and more companies want their management to also be technical as opposed to being a pure people manager - in other words, not only will you manage people but also will be doing individual contributor work.
 
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They probably have an operations manager that can be the acting director until they hire in a cheaper one to save money.
Maybe they offered the director a significant pay cut and if they are close to retirement age they said they rather be laid off and collect unemployment until their SSI kicked in?
 
Ah pure speculation then. Got it.

This is the pharmacy world, pure speculation is often more reliable than facts and truth. Or is that Trump world? Either way, facts and truth are usually boring and depressing, better to go with pure speculation.
 
I feel like this is incredibly optimistic.
Yeah even if you stopped schools today from printing pharmDs the level of saturation would take 20 years to balance out. Pharmacy will become like law. The top 30% of pharmacists will have jobs the bottom 70% will work at mcdonalds or some other low paid job. The free market can't support 15,000 new grads a year with only ~4,000 new jobs a year. That is 11,000 permanently unemployed pharmacists.

The real loser is the tax payer that loaned this easy money to these students that will never get repaid. I imagine the government can just keep printing money to off set this loss further debasing the monetary supply.
 
Yeah even if you stopped schools today from printing pharmDs the level of saturation would take 20 years to balance out. Pharmacy will become like law. The top 30% of pharmacists will have jobs the bottom 70% will work at mcdonalds or some other low paid job. The free market can't support 15,000 new grads a year with only ~4,000 new jobs a year. That is 11,000 permanently unemployed pharmacists.

The real loser is the tax payer that loaned this easy money to these students that will never get repaid. I imagine the government can just keep printing money to off set this loss further debasing the monetary supply.
By that time automation of pharmacy jobs would be implemented full swing
 
By that time automation of pharmacy jobs would be implemented full swing
Well if you add automation and Amazon (TM) and Clover (TM) pharmacy the picture becomes even bleaker for the pharmacist. Perhaps only 15% have jobs working as automation pharmacists for the machines.
 
Well if you add automation and Amazon (TM) and Clover (TM) pharmacy the picture becomes even bleaker for the pharmacist. Perhaps only 15% have jobs working as automation pharmacists for the machines.
Yeah, I agree. Not just Amazon, but even CVS and Walgreens are experimenting with automation
 
Yeah even if you stopped schools today from printing pharmDs the level of saturation would take 20 years to balance out. Pharmacy will become like
Yeah even if you stopped schools today from printing pharmDs the level of saturation would take 20 years to balance out. Pharmacy will become like law. The top 30% of pharmacists will have jobs the bottom 70% will work at mcdonalds or some other low paid job. The free market can't support 15,000 new grads a year with only ~4,000 new jobs a year. That is 11,000 permanently unemployed pharmacists.

The real loser is the tax payer that loaned this easy money to these students that will never get repaid. I imagine the government can just keep printing money to off set this loss further debasing the monetary supply.

law. The top 30% of pharmacists will have jobs the bottom 70% will work at mcdonalds or some other low paid job. The free market can't support 15,000 new grads a year with only ~4,000 new jobs a year. That is 11,000 permanently unemployed pharmacists.

The real loser is the tax payer that loaned this easy money to these students that will never get repaid. I imagine the government can just keep printing money to off set this loss further debasing the monetary supply.

There are about 320K pharmacists now if only 5 percent leave the profession through retirement etc annually then we have
a state of equilibrium. Prove me wrong.
 
There are about 320K pharmacists now if only 5 percent leave the profession through retirement etc annually then we have
a state of equilibrium. Prove me wrong.
The retirement rate is nowhere near 5% or 16,000 a year. You have to think about how many pharmacists were being printed 65 years ago that would be retiring today. That number is very small relative to 16,000.
 
OK.That makes sense.If school classes are about double in 2020 then in 1977 then about 7500 should leave every year.We need about 3 percent job for equilibrium. We are in dire straights.
 
The retirement rate is nowhere near 5% or 16,000 a year. You have to think about how many pharmacists were being printed 65 years ago that would be retiring today. That number is very small relative to 16,000.

This. Plus retirement age is now 67 for full retirement, and 70 to get the maximum bonus. Not to mention irresponsible baby boomers and Gen X'ers who never saved because they are still supporting their own parents, as well as their children......I wouldn't count on many pharmacists even retiring at the normal retirement age. Go to any pharmacy convention, and you will see it is full of pharmacist past retirement age who are still working full or nearly full-time.
 
OK.That makes sense.If school classes are about double in 2020 then in 1977 then about 7500 should leave every year.We need about 3 percent job for equilibrium. We are in dire straights.

The class size has only doubled since 1977? I would have thought it increased exponentially in the past two decades.
 
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