"One of the key questions is 'Are you getting paid for these things?'" he said.
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The challenge, he said, will be convincing customers and insurers to pay - rather than expecting free advice. Walgreens is urging state lawmakers to allow pharmacists to provide a longer list of health-care services. It's not clear how that may play out - whether that will mean smaller pharmacy staff or a workforce that's the same size or bigger, but with different roles. Jefferies' Tanquilut said the automation can reduce staffing needs and turn pharmacists into more hands-on medical providers. "What we were hearing was pharmacy was more of an asset that people gave us credit for." "It's kind of dreary to be filling scripts all day long," he said. Rick Fernandez, a regional health care director for Walgreens in the Dallas area, said the pandemic underscored the value of pharmacists and how they can be used in smarter ways. Walgreens President John Standley said at the company's investor day in October that the micro-fulfillment centers will reduce the company's working capital by $1.1 billion by 2025.Īs more prescriptions get filled by robots, he said pharmacists can take on other duties that Walgreens can bill to insurers or customers, such as testing and treating medical conditions like strep or the flu and writing prescriptions for people at risk of HIV.įor example, as part of a pilot program, pharmacists in Ohio are counseling and managing care for patients with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. To customers, the change to automation would be hard to detect - aside from slightly different packaging.įor Walgreens, the investment could translate into cost savings and new streams of revenue. The same trucks also deliver wholesale drugs to those pharmacies. Trucks from AmeriSourceBergen drive the ready-to-pickup prescriptions to more than 500 drugstores across most of Texas, parts of Arkansas and parts of Louisiana - a radius of about 400 miles. Walgreens will share its fiscal second-quarter earnings on Thursday. "This is a complementary move to some of the health-care strategy they've laid out," he said.ĬVS uses robotics to assist in filling prescriptions in its highest volume stores, but through a spokesperson, the company declined to say how much of its overall volume is filled by automation. Pharmacists will continue to fill time-sensitive medications and controlled substances at local stores as the company expands its use of robots.īrian Tanquilut, an analyst for Jefferies, said the automation could help Walgreens focus on ways to differentiate from online pharmacies suh as Amazon -owned PillPack and Capsule, and CVS, which owns health insurer Aetna and pharmacy benefits manager Caremark.
"We're doing all of this work, so that the pharmacist has an easier job, so that they can get back to being front and center, building a relationship with that patient and interacting the way they were trained - the work that they love to do," she said. Personal Loans for 670 Credit Score or Lower
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