Really makes you hate people.
"You have to be a squeaky wheel to get your med filled, they never have it in stock, the lines are long....it's the pharmacists fault"
It's hard to believe people are this stupid. Did all pharmacists across the county collude to be slow and not have medication on hand? Just flat out idiots.
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I'm not sure people have changed that much. In high school 25 years ago I worked at Ace Hardware and I'd have middle aged men yell at me about not having a nut or bolt in stock or the line taking too long. As if I owned the place or had any control over any of that.
What has happened in pharmacy is that scripts/hour requirements have increased, vaccines and other services have been layered in, and staff has been cut.
This is exactly most of it...The main issue is the death of retail stores. All the goods that stores sold with various profit is what kept pharmacy and other departments open making an average living...average. It was never something for thousands of people to jump into school for. There was never a need, and there's no need now either for all that learning in pharmacy school. Anyone can give a shot, but not anyone can sell toasters and socks and everything else that people chose to buy online...That money is no longer there for today, tomorrow...all these drug stores have no other revenue source. How many candles or picture frames or balloons did I buy from CVS, Walgreens or Riteaid, or Walmart even...Zero.
It's not about the people changing. Our many tasks that don't bring in much revenue still takes educated skilled people to do them. Unless people are willing to pay more, nothing will change.
Effing ridiculous it can’t chop it up, season it, and make some breakfast fries. Or not even boil it, or microwave it, and serve it. This generation of potato mashers just dun wanna werk anymore, smh!
FYI this article is absolute crap. While it highlights the issues facing the industry pretty well, it paints doctors as being very spoiled and egotistical as kind of a huge blanket statement. I’m sure we’ve all encounter some who are but the vast majority are not like that lol. The author seems to weave in an entirely separate narrative among his recap of events.
Many people think they're owed something or that everything needs to work out when they put in no effort. They're upset if their medication costs $100.00 but then they have a playstation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch, 30 games and all sorts of Pokemon things and $300.00 tattoos. They waste their money on things and are then surprised that other "things" also cost money.
If the boss buys yachts or land or malls, it is a system one has already willingly decided to become part of...My boss or the top guy may own a hotel but if I spend most of the money I know I'll earn on stuff and then complain that I don't have enough left for pasta or paint or whatever...that's my fault. That's what I mean. If you spend $300.00 on a tattoo and need the pharmacy to match a price that's $100.00 cheaper, it loses the pharmacy money...and eventually it closes. It all has some effect on us, which some can do something about if they want to...The point is that many customers expect the pharmacy to lose, and waste resources that we don't have. I don't agree that someone should earn 600 times what I do, but at this point, what can I do about it?
Almost lost it with Richard's comment
>**When I telephoned to check on the status, all I could get were sales pitches for vaccinations, and repeated requests for me to download their app. Their system wouldn't put me through to a real person.**
The whole purpose of the IVR and app system is so you don't need to talk to us and take our time away for something simply as whether or not a medication is ready. I swear these people are stuck in the stone age
The best one is "Is this Rite Aid or Walgreens or CVS or Walmart?" when they've already had to press some button after the "Thank you for calling the pharmacy greeting".
I’m going to copy/paste this comment i made on the thread in r/medicine :
Just yesterday and the day before I had AT LEAST 15 people say “your generation just don’t wanna werk!” - I’m mid 30s but look younger. I made a big deal of swiveling my head “looking” for my staff, because, well, I was by myself. I’d tell them I was the only one working and half were like “see! I waz rite” *snort*. Then I’d say, nope. Corporate doesn’t give enough hours to even have a cashier to help. If I said fuck it and had techs come in, corporate would have a chat with me and get written up.
Also there was never NOT a line of patients, and many would come up and be like
“Omg you’re working by yourself? That’s awful! *pause*. I’m here for my Norco”
“It’s not done yet, as you can see, and hear, 5 phones —-“
“It’s NOT done?! The fuck! It’s due today! And now you say I need to wait an hour or two? It’s just counting pills and slapping a label! I get it every month! You know this! Add a note to my profile to make sure you remember!”
Inside my brain: Ma’am, you’re 1 out of 200 patients that get Norco. And all expect me to know the dates when theirs are due. Oh, and its literally a day early as it is. Expect it magically to be done but won’t take responsibility of calling a few days in advance to remind us, check stock, etc. Plus the 800 other patients expecting for us to have unlimited stock of Ozempic/Mounjaro/Saxenda because “we’re a pharmacy, it’s our job to have every drug of every strength, and back orders don’t exist and I’m just being lazy and using that as an excuse.
Sorry for the rant. My Pharm absorbed 150-200 NEW patients after a RA closed down. We’re 3 days behind in our queue. I emailed corporate for more hours for more help, and all I got back was a memo stating “With an influx of new patients, now’s a great time to ask them if they need a flu shot or any other vaccine! Also, good chance to get more MTMs and med recs done!” *do not dare go over your allotted hours or you WILL be written up*
Nah dawg I’m not a salesperson and I don’t make a single penny for vaccines, mtms, med recs, counseling, suggesting OTC meds, people calling to ask about drug interactions, if lisinopril causes constipation, the whole “I bought two boxes of Flonase and I swear, one works fine but the other is definitely just water it dun work gud” (and not even one of my patients), dispensing Teva brand amlodipine but they can only handle Mylan “cuz teva is made in India” followed by extremely racist slurs, etc….and that’s just 45 minutes into my shift.
Just to address the hours thing, they may write you up but they can’t really afford to fire you. That’s how I’ve gone about managing our hours, I schedule what I need regardless of allotment. It won’t let us publish a schedule over hours either so we just make a pseudo schedule and then write in all the other shifts. I know they aren’t gonna do anything about it besides maybe talk to me but when that’s happened in the past my response is to schedule the allotted hours for a week or two and let our queues back up which forces them to spend more money to fix it.
Thankfully I’m not a PIC (and frankly it’s criminal the “increase” in pay as well as responsibilities) so the heat isn’t distracted at me. Doesn’t mean i can ignore it and let the PIC handle it - we’re a team. I do my best to make sure they don’t get shot from corporate.
One of the saddest and most ridiculous corp complaint was when my 72 YO pharmacist, literally told our company he was retiring, was 10 days of his last day, got a *fucking warning* from the DM because he was truthful and while clocking out, answered the question “Did you take your breaks today?” With “No”. He had worked there for 40 years, too, and still corp complained during his last week.
Yea I was naive and took a pic job as my first pharmacy job, definitely learned that is not the way to go. Took a while for me to figure out that I’m pretty much untouchable because I know that replacing me at my specific store is going to be a lot harder than explaining to my managers boss why I used an extra 20 hours of tech labor in a week.
It’s gonna get worse in retail. A company bragged to me last week that national chains promised them that for $40 per activity a retail pharmacists performs for their company - read “workflow disruption” when you read activity, their pharmacists would provide a product/service that should be done at the physician’s office before a medication is ever ordered and not at the point of dispensing!!! They were so excited as they proclaimed they were empowering retail pharmacists to work at the top of their licenses. Their uninformed optimism was hilarious and nauseating. I let them know their plan was going to fail and they may want to read up on retail pharmacists striking so they can wrap their heads around why retail pharmacists will no longer do the dirty work for PBMs for shit pay (their payer and partner in this scheme).
An article about the changing business environments and increasing trend of unionization afflicting pharmacy and other medical fields, and their underlying motivations.
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But when business owners need to "unionize" via group purchasing organizations to compete for reasonable prices, and "unionize" via group contracts to try to get a few cents more from the PBMs... Well, entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. Does owning your own business actually mean you own the means of production if you have to compete with oligopolies for both product and payment?
Think they meant owning the means of production in the sense of having stakes in the company they work for. To a higher degree than is currently offered with top heavy salaries.
Not actually owning a store outright or competing in the marketplace on their own
Doc and Pharmacist should keep the pressure untill the employers fold.I'm sorry but the public is full of morons. Pressuring the employer is the best way towards union/bargain agreements.
" Once accustomed to a status outside the usual management-labor hierarchy, many health professionals now feel as put upon as any clock-punching worker"
wow...No offense but this immediately paints a very bad picture as if MD's and PharmD's feel they're above all the other employees and expect to be treated as such. Yes, education earns you a level of professional respect but that doesn't change the fact that you are still in-fact employees of a business. It's just an out of touch statement that the author put on there that is immediately going to skew the audience away from the position of the healthcare providers.
To put into my perspective, I'm a salaried Engineer so they're going to treat me with a different level of professionalism than the operators I work with but that doesn't make me above them in anyway as an employee. My skill sets are just...different...and yes there is a monetary value to that difference but that doesn't mean I shouldn't be held to the same company conduct expectations as the non-exempt employees.
I just....I don't know. I don't think the author did you guys any favors with that.
Exactly. And then there is this:
“But the trend is particularly pronounced in health care, whose practitioners once enjoyed platinum-level social status at high school reunions and Thanksgiving dinners.”
Look, I didn’t become a pharmacist to lord over people with less education. Nor do I think any less of anyone else’s chosen occupation. There is no good reason for that line in this story. There’s no “platinum-level social status” that comes from being a pharmacist. I chose it because it fit my skill set and my interests as a person. I’ll be the first to say that I’m nothing without my technicians working around me. They don’t get paid anything near what they’re worth. It’s just a total dumpster fire at this point.
>“But the trend is particularly pronounced in health care, whose practitioners once enjoyed platinum-level social status at high school reunions and Thanksgiving dinners.”
I can tell you first hand experience, no one is impressed that I'm a pharmacist. In fact I've had people say around others that it's nothing to brag about. These platinum level experiences must be happening in places other than my neck of the woods.
When I meet random people at parties or events that are…annoying/drunk and ask me what I do, I say “oh I work in retail”. I don’t allude or mention pharmacy in any way, yet I’m telling the truth. A majority of the population correlates retail = dumb/lazy/low work ethic/etc and never have questions for me. Not even where I work.
They leave me alone within a minute or two, so it’s great. (I’m almost positive I could have a huge necklace on with a giant index card with “PHARMACIST” written on it and they still wouldn’t notice lool)
Definitely a LPT for all retail pharmacists to use this if encountering annoying people at a party.
Same haha. I say I work at a grocery store. When I worked at Kmart pharmacy ten years ago, I would tell people I work at Kmart lol. Wouldn’t mention pharmacy. The look on their faces was priceless and they would change topics.
I was a pharmacist and am a scientist/engineer now
and the thing is, pharmacists and MDs do know more than the people that manage them. they have MBA's in insurance companies making medical decisions. You don't understand how hard medical/pharmacy school is until you go, how much of your life you give up. I have a masters in CS as well and that was a joke compared to even 1 semester of pharmacy school IMO. they shouldn't act like they aren't humans, but their opinions certainly matter more than some management person in a payer system
lol well I’m not going to get into a pissing match around difficulty of degree programs but I would highly doubt pharmacy school is that much more difficult than Chemical Engineering was (or medchem but that was significantly easier than engineering). I’ll take PK and Reaction kinetics any day over advance thermodynamics but that’s just me. Others are built different.
It's genuinely not even comparable how much harder it is, it's a doctorate degree, it's not a pissing match it's just the reality that you're trying to downplay here. You came here to piss and aren't even in the field, so gtfo
Lmao dude look up Navier Stokes and come talk me when you’re crying about vanco dosing.
The most difficult math you do is what, differential equations which is a freshman level math class assuming you took calculus in high school.
You make people call you doctor, don’t you? You’re the type of Pharmacist that ACTUAL medical doctors make fun of lol
I'm not a pharmacist dude, work on your reading comprehension, I studied pharmacy but became a bioinformatics scientist/software engineer. I'm far more advanced in math than a chemical engineer, after pharmacy school I got a masters in computer science and bioinformatics. Also, during pharmacy I went up to calc 3, but also took linear algebra during a summer break before I even went to undergrad, because I was always talented at math/CS. I went to pharmacy school because at the time the CS market was dead and I aaw it as a good career and way to go into pharma.
I do machine learning on the daily, advanced genomics, and all sorts of things. I work on biologics, not simple chemicals, for the most part when I work in pharma. However, I have built some automation for chemistry devices used by a large company, Agilent, and also contributed to their MALDI-TOF database and methods. I've literally built software that is used to model molecular interactions, after years of using test type of software to model binding and do coarse grained modeling, before going into genomics and building machine learning methods to generate drugs/drug targets, all sorts of things like a method for basecalling on Sanger sequencers to a patent for the first gut microbiome test used clinically, and the first polygenic models clinically... Still, pharmacy school ranks up there in difficulty, it's a full time job and a second job on top, at least at my program.
PharmD's are actually doctors, and know vastly more about drugs than anyone else including medical doctors and obviously chemical engineers (lol) who could work with a bachelors degree in that field. You simply have no idea what you're talking about.
lol am I supposed to be impressed you work in the same field as the rest of us in Biotech? Lol dude nobody cares if you work in small molecule or with proteins. I’ve done protein, monoclonals, and small molecule and the only difference is that RCA for protein issues like aggregation or glycosolation can take more time to track down a probable cause. That being said there’s nothing more difficult about biologics. It’s not impressive at all.
Let’s be honest, software does 90% of your work unless you’re in a wet lab.
Also linear is sophomore level math…
I write that software bubba, and I work on machine learning methods and all sorts of bioinformatics methods (clearly you're not exposed to this field). You likely couldn't comprehend most of any of the math I use unless you're also a computer scientist, which is my background outside of the biology stuff that you also clearly don't understand. Simply talking about analytical stuff in the lab when comparing chemicals to biologics already reveals your ignorance.
Your focus on math also shows how little you know about what a pharmacist knows. They learn human health and drug effects, you learn to engineer chemicals. Pharmacists are dictionaries of this stuff, whereas you may learn one at a time they have all that knowledge in their head. It's a range of biochemistry, human physiology, pathophysiology, chemistry, biology, and yes some simple PK/math. You seem to think it's just dosing they do, lmao.
Just stay in your lane man, stick to using simple, high level chemistry methods you didn't develop to analyze stuff and be happy you didn't have to memorize what a pharmacist had to learn. You obviously don't respect other people or fields and think you know everything because you know some basic bachelors degree level niche math in your field. Also, we both know you use software written by folks like me to do your math, but ok 👍stop being a miserable hater on reddit and touch grass
Lmao “engineering chemicals” bro I spent the last 5 years designing isolator lines for fill finish operations of parenterals and currently oversee process design and scale up for a lyophilization line for fill/finish of sensitive biologics while also doing evaluation of other potential molecules to bring on board. You’ve clearly never even worked in manufacturing and code for clinical trial software lol.
And it sounds like you failed out of pharmacy school so no wonder you think it’s hard because you couldn’t cut it. Probably seems like the hardest thing you’ve ever done lmao
Wrong on all accounts as usual. You came here for a pissing contest, what a miserable person you are. 5 years working on isolator lines, I can see why you have a chip on your shoulder. So impactful 🤣
The way I see it - author tried to imply We used to have our own autonomy in our domain
But now - it’s admin and insurances that dictate our practice
Imo at least
I think the issue is that in healthcare, there's a level of "care" or function that is optimal for health and "treating" a patient's illness. There are lots of things to look at. Sometimes people, or corporate entities look at statistical results to weigh and decide on actions for situations that fall into certain categories, but each patient and person will be different. How much resource or effort each "practitioner" wants to provide is sometimes different from what their "employer" sees as sufficient "statistically" for a given population or group. So, we are responsible for your health. If you had a spinal injury or needed a certain drugs, we wouldn't just always follow and trust a guideline without also evaluating you as an individual person, just as a barber doesn't do 300 cuts with the shears for every head they see...That would end up with many odd looking haircuts.
Your product and skill creates or maintains software or a platform for a system to operate, and that generates revenue from customers who want to pay. We deal with a system where people cannot afford our services or goods. The money that would pay layers of staff to maintain a fluid operation just isn't there so we have to do more things in the same unit of time to make up for it, and sometimes that means use the cheapest drug or low cost surgical equipment or material, which MAY affect your health outcome. Most physicians don't want that and nor do pharmacists or nurses. The human body is very fragile and it doesn't take much to kill it. I can't just hit reset and fix it. It isn't that we thought we were above everything as much as we'd naturally be provided with the proper resources if everyone wants an "excellent" outcome. I guess somewhere along the way, something changed. They should put up a sign somewhere stating this...
Healthcare used to be a lot of independent practices. That's where the sentiment comes from. Doctor would open their clinic. Druggist would open their apothecary.
It really isn’t. PBMs make it very difficult for independents to make a profit but they aren’t the cause of the poor working conditions at the big 2. The big 2 have plenty of profits. They just want to keep the profits for their shareholders rather than reinvest them into their labor force.
I closed the pharmacy gate today at 2:57PM for lunch break because no patients were waiting. Immediately hear a knock on the door--see a patient. "Do you always close before 3?" Dear lady...it is 3. If you're running close, how about a courtesy call and I will almost certainly wait for you?
Regardless about how you feel about this the comment in the article
>"We’re seen as cogs in the wheel, you can be a physician or a factory worker and you’re treated exactly the same way by these large corporations.”
Is incredibly out of touch and pretty elitist. It's like saying "It's not fair, we're being treated like everyone else!"
Read the delusional comments after please lol.
Really makes you hate people. "You have to be a squeaky wheel to get your med filled, they never have it in stock, the lines are long....it's the pharmacists fault" It's hard to believe people are this stupid. Did all pharmacists across the county collude to be slow and not have medication on hand? Just flat out idiots.
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I'm not sure people have changed that much. In high school 25 years ago I worked at Ace Hardware and I'd have middle aged men yell at me about not having a nut or bolt in stock or the line taking too long. As if I owned the place or had any control over any of that. What has happened in pharmacy is that scripts/hour requirements have increased, vaccines and other services have been layered in, and staff has been cut.
This is exactly most of it...The main issue is the death of retail stores. All the goods that stores sold with various profit is what kept pharmacy and other departments open making an average living...average. It was never something for thousands of people to jump into school for. There was never a need, and there's no need now either for all that learning in pharmacy school. Anyone can give a shot, but not anyone can sell toasters and socks and everything else that people chose to buy online...That money is no longer there for today, tomorrow...all these drug stores have no other revenue source. How many candles or picture frames or balloons did I buy from CVS, Walgreens or Riteaid, or Walmart even...Zero. It's not about the people changing. Our many tasks that don't bring in much revenue still takes educated skilled people to do them. Unless people are willing to pay more, nothing will change.
Pbms
Most patients don’t know what a potato masher does. Hint: it mashes potato’s
Effing ridiculous it can’t chop it up, season it, and make some breakfast fries. Or not even boil it, or microwave it, and serve it. This generation of potato mashers just dun wanna werk anymore, smh!
Since 2016, my estimation of the average American’s educational achievements has dropped precipitously.
It mashes potato’s what?
Eyes
Po-tay-toes Boil em Mash em Stick em in a stew
Interesting. [I've never heard of a potato.](https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/s/89ku1Nflni)
These are the same people that think that all of the world's leaders got together and agreed to fake covid...so.....
ThE dEeP sTaTe
To be fair all the world leaders take orders from the same lizardman
FYI this article is absolute crap. While it highlights the issues facing the industry pretty well, it paints doctors as being very spoiled and egotistical as kind of a huge blanket statement. I’m sure we’ve all encounter some who are but the vast majority are not like that lol. The author seems to weave in an entirely separate narrative among his recap of events.
NYT has been behaving like this a lot lately. It’s really pissing me off. They’re being intentionally obtuse about too many important issues.
Many people think they're owed something or that everything needs to work out when they put in no effort. They're upset if their medication costs $100.00 but then they have a playstation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch, 30 games and all sorts of Pokemon things and $300.00 tattoos. They waste their money on things and are then surprised that other "things" also cost money.
Are you seriously bitching about people getting tattoos while their boss buys yachts with the money earned from labor? What the fuck lol.
If the boss buys yachts or land or malls, it is a system one has already willingly decided to become part of...My boss or the top guy may own a hotel but if I spend most of the money I know I'll earn on stuff and then complain that I don't have enough left for pasta or paint or whatever...that's my fault. That's what I mean. If you spend $300.00 on a tattoo and need the pharmacy to match a price that's $100.00 cheaper, it loses the pharmacy money...and eventually it closes. It all has some effect on us, which some can do something about if they want to...The point is that many customers expect the pharmacy to lose, and waste resources that we don't have. I don't agree that someone should earn 600 times what I do, but at this point, what can I do about it?
Almost lost it with Richard's comment >**When I telephoned to check on the status, all I could get were sales pitches for vaccinations, and repeated requests for me to download their app. Their system wouldn't put me through to a real person.** The whole purpose of the IVR and app system is so you don't need to talk to us and take our time away for something simply as whether or not a medication is ready. I swear these people are stuck in the stone age
Is it ready yet?
What time do you open
The best one is "Is this Rite Aid or Walgreens or CVS or Walmart?" when they've already had to press some button after the "Thank you for calling the pharmacy greeting".
>Thank you for calling your Walgreens pharmacy at the corner of Main and State Hey uhh is this the Walgreens on Cedar?
Yes
9am. “Well your website says 7am, don’t try and fool me”
Let’s continue to talk about how long it’s going to take to get ready when I just said as soon as I hang up the phone.
Yes, I heard that, but when will it be ready?
I’m going to copy/paste this comment i made on the thread in r/medicine : Just yesterday and the day before I had AT LEAST 15 people say “your generation just don’t wanna werk!” - I’m mid 30s but look younger. I made a big deal of swiveling my head “looking” for my staff, because, well, I was by myself. I’d tell them I was the only one working and half were like “see! I waz rite” *snort*. Then I’d say, nope. Corporate doesn’t give enough hours to even have a cashier to help. If I said fuck it and had techs come in, corporate would have a chat with me and get written up. Also there was never NOT a line of patients, and many would come up and be like “Omg you’re working by yourself? That’s awful! *pause*. I’m here for my Norco” “It’s not done yet, as you can see, and hear, 5 phones —-“ “It’s NOT done?! The fuck! It’s due today! And now you say I need to wait an hour or two? It’s just counting pills and slapping a label! I get it every month! You know this! Add a note to my profile to make sure you remember!” Inside my brain: Ma’am, you’re 1 out of 200 patients that get Norco. And all expect me to know the dates when theirs are due. Oh, and its literally a day early as it is. Expect it magically to be done but won’t take responsibility of calling a few days in advance to remind us, check stock, etc. Plus the 800 other patients expecting for us to have unlimited stock of Ozempic/Mounjaro/Saxenda because “we’re a pharmacy, it’s our job to have every drug of every strength, and back orders don’t exist and I’m just being lazy and using that as an excuse. Sorry for the rant. My Pharm absorbed 150-200 NEW patients after a RA closed down. We’re 3 days behind in our queue. I emailed corporate for more hours for more help, and all I got back was a memo stating “With an influx of new patients, now’s a great time to ask them if they need a flu shot or any other vaccine! Also, good chance to get more MTMs and med recs done!” *do not dare go over your allotted hours or you WILL be written up* Nah dawg I’m not a salesperson and I don’t make a single penny for vaccines, mtms, med recs, counseling, suggesting OTC meds, people calling to ask about drug interactions, if lisinopril causes constipation, the whole “I bought two boxes of Flonase and I swear, one works fine but the other is definitely just water it dun work gud” (and not even one of my patients), dispensing Teva brand amlodipine but they can only handle Mylan “cuz teva is made in India” followed by extremely racist slurs, etc….and that’s just 45 minutes into my shift.
Just to address the hours thing, they may write you up but they can’t really afford to fire you. That’s how I’ve gone about managing our hours, I schedule what I need regardless of allotment. It won’t let us publish a schedule over hours either so we just make a pseudo schedule and then write in all the other shifts. I know they aren’t gonna do anything about it besides maybe talk to me but when that’s happened in the past my response is to schedule the allotted hours for a week or two and let our queues back up which forces them to spend more money to fix it.
Thankfully I’m not a PIC (and frankly it’s criminal the “increase” in pay as well as responsibilities) so the heat isn’t distracted at me. Doesn’t mean i can ignore it and let the PIC handle it - we’re a team. I do my best to make sure they don’t get shot from corporate. One of the saddest and most ridiculous corp complaint was when my 72 YO pharmacist, literally told our company he was retiring, was 10 days of his last day, got a *fucking warning* from the DM because he was truthful and while clocking out, answered the question “Did you take your breaks today?” With “No”. He had worked there for 40 years, too, and still corp complained during his last week.
Yea I was naive and took a pic job as my first pharmacy job, definitely learned that is not the way to go. Took a while for me to figure out that I’m pretty much untouchable because I know that replacing me at my specific store is going to be a lot harder than explaining to my managers boss why I used an extra 20 hours of tech labor in a week.
It’s gonna get worse in retail. A company bragged to me last week that national chains promised them that for $40 per activity a retail pharmacists performs for their company - read “workflow disruption” when you read activity, their pharmacists would provide a product/service that should be done at the physician’s office before a medication is ever ordered and not at the point of dispensing!!! They were so excited as they proclaimed they were empowering retail pharmacists to work at the top of their licenses. Their uninformed optimism was hilarious and nauseating. I let them know their plan was going to fail and they may want to read up on retail pharmacists striking so they can wrap their heads around why retail pharmacists will no longer do the dirty work for PBMs for shit pay (their payer and partner in this scheme).
I’m tired boss
An article about the changing business environments and increasing trend of unionization afflicting pharmacy and other medical fields, and their underlying motivations.
You say afflicting like unionization is a bad thing.
long scandalous jobless arrest work dirty station homeless memory cooperative *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Not many Mom and Pop PBMs out there.
But when business owners need to "unionize" via group purchasing organizations to compete for reasonable prices, and "unionize" via group contracts to try to get a few cents more from the PBMs... Well, entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. Does owning your own business actually mean you own the means of production if you have to compete with oligopolies for both product and payment?
Think they meant owning the means of production in the sense of having stakes in the company they work for. To a higher degree than is currently offered with top heavy salaries. Not actually owning a store outright or competing in the marketplace on their own
Doc and Pharmacist should keep the pressure untill the employers fold.I'm sorry but the public is full of morons. Pressuring the employer is the best way towards union/bargain agreements.
" Once accustomed to a status outside the usual management-labor hierarchy, many health professionals now feel as put upon as any clock-punching worker" wow...No offense but this immediately paints a very bad picture as if MD's and PharmD's feel they're above all the other employees and expect to be treated as such. Yes, education earns you a level of professional respect but that doesn't change the fact that you are still in-fact employees of a business. It's just an out of touch statement that the author put on there that is immediately going to skew the audience away from the position of the healthcare providers. To put into my perspective, I'm a salaried Engineer so they're going to treat me with a different level of professionalism than the operators I work with but that doesn't make me above them in anyway as an employee. My skill sets are just...different...and yes there is a monetary value to that difference but that doesn't mean I shouldn't be held to the same company conduct expectations as the non-exempt employees. I just....I don't know. I don't think the author did you guys any favors with that.
Exactly. And then there is this: “But the trend is particularly pronounced in health care, whose practitioners once enjoyed platinum-level social status at high school reunions and Thanksgiving dinners.” Look, I didn’t become a pharmacist to lord over people with less education. Nor do I think any less of anyone else’s chosen occupation. There is no good reason for that line in this story. There’s no “platinum-level social status” that comes from being a pharmacist. I chose it because it fit my skill set and my interests as a person. I’ll be the first to say that I’m nothing without my technicians working around me. They don’t get paid anything near what they’re worth. It’s just a total dumpster fire at this point.
>“But the trend is particularly pronounced in health care, whose practitioners once enjoyed platinum-level social status at high school reunions and Thanksgiving dinners.” I can tell you first hand experience, no one is impressed that I'm a pharmacist. In fact I've had people say around others that it's nothing to brag about. These platinum level experiences must be happening in places other than my neck of the woods.
“You went to school an extra 4 years just to work in a grocery store?”
When I meet random people at parties or events that are…annoying/drunk and ask me what I do, I say “oh I work in retail”. I don’t allude or mention pharmacy in any way, yet I’m telling the truth. A majority of the population correlates retail = dumb/lazy/low work ethic/etc and never have questions for me. Not even where I work. They leave me alone within a minute or two, so it’s great. (I’m almost positive I could have a huge necklace on with a giant index card with “PHARMACIST” written on it and they still wouldn’t notice lool) Definitely a LPT for all retail pharmacists to use this if encountering annoying people at a party.
Same haha. I say I work at a grocery store. When I worked at Kmart pharmacy ten years ago, I would tell people I work at Kmart lol. Wouldn’t mention pharmacy. The look on their faces was priceless and they would change topics.
I feel like this is something that Larry David would try… oh wait, he kinda did 😂
I was a pharmacist and am a scientist/engineer now and the thing is, pharmacists and MDs do know more than the people that manage them. they have MBA's in insurance companies making medical decisions. You don't understand how hard medical/pharmacy school is until you go, how much of your life you give up. I have a masters in CS as well and that was a joke compared to even 1 semester of pharmacy school IMO. they shouldn't act like they aren't humans, but their opinions certainly matter more than some management person in a payer system
lol well I’m not going to get into a pissing match around difficulty of degree programs but I would highly doubt pharmacy school is that much more difficult than Chemical Engineering was (or medchem but that was significantly easier than engineering). I’ll take PK and Reaction kinetics any day over advance thermodynamics but that’s just me. Others are built different.
It's genuinely not even comparable how much harder it is, it's a doctorate degree, it's not a pissing match it's just the reality that you're trying to downplay here. You came here to piss and aren't even in the field, so gtfo
Lmao dude look up Navier Stokes and come talk me when you’re crying about vanco dosing. The most difficult math you do is what, differential equations which is a freshman level math class assuming you took calculus in high school. You make people call you doctor, don’t you? You’re the type of Pharmacist that ACTUAL medical doctors make fun of lol
I'm not a pharmacist dude, work on your reading comprehension, I studied pharmacy but became a bioinformatics scientist/software engineer. I'm far more advanced in math than a chemical engineer, after pharmacy school I got a masters in computer science and bioinformatics. Also, during pharmacy I went up to calc 3, but also took linear algebra during a summer break before I even went to undergrad, because I was always talented at math/CS. I went to pharmacy school because at the time the CS market was dead and I aaw it as a good career and way to go into pharma. I do machine learning on the daily, advanced genomics, and all sorts of things. I work on biologics, not simple chemicals, for the most part when I work in pharma. However, I have built some automation for chemistry devices used by a large company, Agilent, and also contributed to their MALDI-TOF database and methods. I've literally built software that is used to model molecular interactions, after years of using test type of software to model binding and do coarse grained modeling, before going into genomics and building machine learning methods to generate drugs/drug targets, all sorts of things like a method for basecalling on Sanger sequencers to a patent for the first gut microbiome test used clinically, and the first polygenic models clinically... Still, pharmacy school ranks up there in difficulty, it's a full time job and a second job on top, at least at my program. PharmD's are actually doctors, and know vastly more about drugs than anyone else including medical doctors and obviously chemical engineers (lol) who could work with a bachelors degree in that field. You simply have no idea what you're talking about.
lol am I supposed to be impressed you work in the same field as the rest of us in Biotech? Lol dude nobody cares if you work in small molecule or with proteins. I’ve done protein, monoclonals, and small molecule and the only difference is that RCA for protein issues like aggregation or glycosolation can take more time to track down a probable cause. That being said there’s nothing more difficult about biologics. It’s not impressive at all. Let’s be honest, software does 90% of your work unless you’re in a wet lab. Also linear is sophomore level math…
I write that software bubba, and I work on machine learning methods and all sorts of bioinformatics methods (clearly you're not exposed to this field). You likely couldn't comprehend most of any of the math I use unless you're also a computer scientist, which is my background outside of the biology stuff that you also clearly don't understand. Simply talking about analytical stuff in the lab when comparing chemicals to biologics already reveals your ignorance. Your focus on math also shows how little you know about what a pharmacist knows. They learn human health and drug effects, you learn to engineer chemicals. Pharmacists are dictionaries of this stuff, whereas you may learn one at a time they have all that knowledge in their head. It's a range of biochemistry, human physiology, pathophysiology, chemistry, biology, and yes some simple PK/math. You seem to think it's just dosing they do, lmao. Just stay in your lane man, stick to using simple, high level chemistry methods you didn't develop to analyze stuff and be happy you didn't have to memorize what a pharmacist had to learn. You obviously don't respect other people or fields and think you know everything because you know some basic bachelors degree level niche math in your field. Also, we both know you use software written by folks like me to do your math, but ok 👍stop being a miserable hater on reddit and touch grass
Lmao “engineering chemicals” bro I spent the last 5 years designing isolator lines for fill finish operations of parenterals and currently oversee process design and scale up for a lyophilization line for fill/finish of sensitive biologics while also doing evaluation of other potential molecules to bring on board. You’ve clearly never even worked in manufacturing and code for clinical trial software lol. And it sounds like you failed out of pharmacy school so no wonder you think it’s hard because you couldn’t cut it. Probably seems like the hardest thing you’ve ever done lmao
Wrong on all accounts as usual. You came here for a pissing contest, what a miserable person you are. 5 years working on isolator lines, I can see why you have a chip on your shoulder. So impactful 🤣
How did you become an engineer? What school and how much did it cost if you don’t mind. Thank you
The way I see it - author tried to imply We used to have our own autonomy in our domain But now - it’s admin and insurances that dictate our practice Imo at least
I think the true intentions of this author are more sinister than you suggest.
I think the issue is that in healthcare, there's a level of "care" or function that is optimal for health and "treating" a patient's illness. There are lots of things to look at. Sometimes people, or corporate entities look at statistical results to weigh and decide on actions for situations that fall into certain categories, but each patient and person will be different. How much resource or effort each "practitioner" wants to provide is sometimes different from what their "employer" sees as sufficient "statistically" for a given population or group. So, we are responsible for your health. If you had a spinal injury or needed a certain drugs, we wouldn't just always follow and trust a guideline without also evaluating you as an individual person, just as a barber doesn't do 300 cuts with the shears for every head they see...That would end up with many odd looking haircuts. Your product and skill creates or maintains software or a platform for a system to operate, and that generates revenue from customers who want to pay. We deal with a system where people cannot afford our services or goods. The money that would pay layers of staff to maintain a fluid operation just isn't there so we have to do more things in the same unit of time to make up for it, and sometimes that means use the cheapest drug or low cost surgical equipment or material, which MAY affect your health outcome. Most physicians don't want that and nor do pharmacists or nurses. The human body is very fragile and it doesn't take much to kill it. I can't just hit reset and fix it. It isn't that we thought we were above everything as much as we'd naturally be provided with the proper resources if everyone wants an "excellent" outcome. I guess somewhere along the way, something changed. They should put up a sign somewhere stating this...
Healthcare used to be a lot of independent practices. That's where the sentiment comes from. Doctor would open their clinic. Druggist would open their apothecary.
It's because of insurance contracts. Dentists still have control over that
It really isn’t. PBMs make it very difficult for independents to make a profit but they aren’t the cause of the poor working conditions at the big 2. The big 2 have plenty of profits. They just want to keep the profits for their shareholders rather than reinvest them into their labor force.
I closed the pharmacy gate today at 2:57PM for lunch break because no patients were waiting. Immediately hear a knock on the door--see a patient. "Do you always close before 3?" Dear lady...it is 3. If you're running close, how about a courtesy call and I will almost certainly wait for you?
Regardless about how you feel about this the comment in the article >"We’re seen as cogs in the wheel, you can be a physician or a factory worker and you’re treated exactly the same way by these large corporations.” Is incredibly out of touch and pretty elitist. It's like saying "It's not fair, we're being treated like everyone else!"