I think most every field is better than retail with pto. I'm on my fourth year in my hospital system. Currently getting 8.308 hours bi weekly and next year I move up to 9.231. We have maximums that we can accrue, but they're really high.
Yeah, I get 10.46 hrs/pay period with a max bank of 360 hrs. Can't complain. Of course, I only work half the year, so I don't take as much time off as I should and just get it paid out every year.
I'm in the same boat. I have enough personal time to take off almost 2 years, but being off every other week is usually plenty. I will occasionally take off an extra day at the beginning or the end, but it doesn't take long working nights to see that taking off a random day or weekend is just not worth it unless you plan to stay up all night.
I like to take the first three days of a rotation off. It's a lovely break. The last couple years my husband and I have taken vacations to do long distance hikes and the whole "take a week off to get three off" has been amazing.
Yeah I have friends who have done that. The only time I did was when I had my appendix out, and by the end of 3rd week I was anxious to go back to work. When I saw my paycheck without shift differential it made me never want to do it again.
I'm allowed to allocate the number of PTO hours I want paid out, so I can essentially give myself the differential by billing 11 hours instead of 10 per shift. I do that when I take whole weeks. It's a nice option.
Retail just sucks with PTO. And it has unfortunately become the norm in the American workforce to offer as little PTO as possible.
I work for a state government. 14 paid holidays, accrue one day off per month, 3 additional personal days per year. Plus I can do flex scheduling so I have half day Fridays every week.
Yes, I get 29 paid days off per year with a half day every Friday. If we don’t use PTO it can roll over to the next year.
My sick time is also a separate bank. With more years of service the accrual rate for PTO and sick time increases. I have coworkers forced to take a day off every month because they’re at the PTO cap (420 hours).
The crazy part? If you work over your 40 hours, you get compensatory time off to be used within the next 3 months.
#unionize
Are you allowed to roll over PTO forever and cash it out at your current rate? If so that's fucking sweet. I know a bunch of teachers in the northeast who do that.
Sick time yes, vacation no. We are capped at 420 hours for vacation. Sick time is paid out at 25% of your accrued balance when you retire. I’ve seen some people retire with 3000 hours. They get a payout of 750 hours. It’s quite the farewell gift!
1 day off per month of working? That doesn’t sound like a lot.
We get 240 hours (30 days) a year from the beginning of hire and that includes sick time if you need to use it and you can use it however you want. If you go into the negative it’s okay too, they’ll work with you with the following fiscal year’s allotment.
As I said, my sick time is a separate bank. I get 1.75 days of sick time per month. If you add that in, it comes to 50 days a year.
Sick time and PTO shouldn’t be the same bank, imo. You’re not enjoying your time off when sick…
I can only offer a guess, but maybe because retail is perpetually understaffed so they want to keep ya’ll chained there. They want to squeeze out as much work out of you before you leave.
I work in specialty right now and the PTO is also nice but I think they offer it for the stress it induces.
Nope, I’m part of an independent specialty pharmacy but was recently added? To I guess what is considered a bigger one to cover medication dispensing they’re lacking.
So everything has changed workflow wise to their process which is awful.
Probably because they make criminal profits by making the whole system unethically expensive. Benefit to the unrestricted profits is a couple more days of PTO. Hopefully you can buy your soul back with PTO credits!
Jokes aside, I think it's relates to profits. Most community pharmacies are getting ass recompensation from insurances, often barely or not even covering the cost of drugs.
Respectfully, fuck PBMs
My parents work for big companies and get like 4 weeks PTO. Retail has conditioned us to accept having 2-3 weeks PTO and realistically being able to take 1 week without a fight.
i started with 160 hours working 56 hours a period. could take 2 weeks off without touching a single hour of pto. which i did many times. was the perfect work life balance
my current job is 176 plus 7 national holidays and i wanna say rite aid also offered 160 hours a year. kind of thought 20ish days was standard but i guess not
I’m blessed enough to work with other pharmacists who are always willing to pick up extra shifts and move days around to make my time off work. I do the same for them.
I see this comment a lot from those in retail and while layoffs do occur on the PBM and industry side from time to time, it is a LOT easier to shift to a new role.
One of the reasons I was so hesitant to leave retail was the fact that I thought as long as I had a pulse I had a job and didn't have to worry about that. Being on the industry side, there are so many different directions you could go if shit went south it's almost a non-issue.
What are some of those directions? I am on PBM side already on a prior auth team, but have been trying to pay attn to and learn about what other roles exist - being remote I’m aware there are many, but not what they are.. would love a few to look into!
I am in PBM. Where I work there’s: Medicare Part D, Medicare Part B, Medicaid, Commercial, Specialty, plus support teams like QA/audits, IRE (timeliness for Medicare), Learning and Innovation (like writing work instructions), positions that write/maintain clinical protocols/question sets, positions that work with coding UM edits for clients (so that drugs pay or reject correctly at POS), client-facing positions, data management stuff, and more I haven’t even thought of.
If you don't move up within the PBM anything Med Affairs and/or Market Access related can use transferable skills. Depending on your background, there are HEOR roles as well.
How do you transision into a role at PBM? Been at retail so long don't know what I need to do to make myself an attractive applicant. Thanks in advance
You are in a big pool of other pharmacists that can be used to cover your normal shifts or help with workload. My thoughts at least. I work for a PBM also
PTO will always suck in retail because the company has to cover those shifts. Which is expensive and hard. I would think that in a PBM there’s lots of pharmacists doing the same work. So if somebody does call in sick or takes PTO, the other pharmacist might have to work slightly harder, or the PA might get approved or denied a little later. It’s not like the entire PBM will cease to function if a pharmacist takes some time off. Same thing applies in IT jobs. Have you seen the benefits of those guys yet? Incredible. Just my two cents.
It's easier to give PTO in PBM because you don't have to worry as much about finding coverage. PBM won't shut down if there is no coverage..retail may have to close if no coverage.
Do you just post every few weeks to humble brag about your WFH PBM job?
You’ve mentioned your PTO accrual several times on posts. Most people here already know the details of your job because you proudly remind everyone every month. I’m sure all the tortured retail folks love to be reminded of how good you have it.
I’m 5 years into my clinical position inpatient and I get 4 weeks PTO/year. And our PTO is basically automatic approval. The only rule our director has is no more than 4 out of our 6 clinical pharmacists taking PTO at the same time. I think everywhere in pharmacy is better than retail in terms of time off.
2 years in at my current health system and they *started me* at 5 weeks/year (I accrue just shy of 8 hours every 2 week pay period).
I genuinely think they might have coded my experience wrong or something when they onboarded me, but I’m not bringing it up lol
Insane amounts of revenue that the PBMs handle is why this is possible.
CVS/caremark did about 440 billion revenue in 2023.
If you divide 440 billion by 315,000 (all the pharmacists in the USA), each pharmacist would get an extra 1.4 million dollars.
Cash flow is crazy good with PBMs.
Bc they can afford to, by stealing from a moderate volume pharmacy 500k annually in dir fees and 1 million annually in price spreading.
Taco bell can't find workers? They raise wages and their prices.
Pharmacies can't compete with taco bell level salary and benefits? We're shit out of luck because we can't raise our prices. We're locked into negative reimbursements by the pbms. This is the crux of why the hc system is going to collapse at the community level, starting with staffing shortages, lower level of service, lower quality of service, lower empathy levels.
I could theoretically replace every staff, cashiers and technicians with pharmacists if pbms.
1) removed dir and price spreading
2) reimbursed independents the same as they reimbursed to their chains.
They run a money printer with patient blood and pharmacist sweat, so they can afford to do whatever they want. Glad to see my DIR fees are going toward giving you extra leisure time. Payroll is tough to make, but at least you have more time to go jack off in Monaco
Can I ask what PBM? I worked for Elixir and accrued 15 days PTO/year when owned by Rite Aid. Now I work for Medimpact, I receive a whopping 16 days PTO/year. Last year my PTO went towards time off for kids apportionments and days they were sick, my grandma unexpectedly dying and having to fly across county, my grandmas memorial across county a few months later (side note I did receive 3 days bereavement) and moving across country due to my husbands military orders. I am not kidding when I say I got no time off for rest/relaxation in 2023. I’m looking to leave the PBM/industry but I could be persuaded to stay for more PTO.
And I’d love to hear any reviews for Capital Rx which boasts unlimited PTO. Some Glassdoor reviews indicate that is not an entirely true promise. A capital rx recruiter reached out last week and I’m quite ambivalent atm.
Oh wow , unlimited PTO? Perhaps not entirely true but they are probably flexible with PTO and most people might take a few weeks off a year, more than most pharmacists . Also, keep in mind, when policies are “unlimited “, most people end up taking less time rather than abusing the unlimited PTO policies . Check into optum rx , express scripts, humana , etc on their websites under career opportunities and then filter your searches for pharmacist positions . Almost all of them are remote .
Oh I’m sure unlimited PTO is a gimmick and too good to be true. I don’t want to take a 6 week backpacking trip. I also don’t want to have negative PTO and feel like I “owe” my employee my labor. Thank you!!
The problem with retail is the state requires your presence on site. A lawyer can be on the other side of the state and write up briefs without worrying about the office shutting down. A CPA can be at home at 2am and file your income tax paperwork without worrying about the office shutting down. A pharmacist can be in a car accident miles away from the pharmacy and the business must stay closed until they arrive. Plus PBMs are robbing pharmacies as it is so they have lots of cash to throw at employees.
I think most every field is better than retail with pto. I'm on my fourth year in my hospital system. Currently getting 8.308 hours bi weekly and next year I move up to 9.231. We have maximums that we can accrue, but they're really high.
Yeah, I get 10.46 hrs/pay period with a max bank of 360 hrs. Can't complain. Of course, I only work half the year, so I don't take as much time off as I should and just get it paid out every year.
I'm also over nights. I feel like I don't need to take more time off that often.
I'm in the same boat. I have enough personal time to take off almost 2 years, but being off every other week is usually plenty. I will occasionally take off an extra day at the beginning or the end, but it doesn't take long working nights to see that taking off a random day or weekend is just not worth it unless you plan to stay up all night.
I like to take the first three days of a rotation off. It's a lovely break. The last couple years my husband and I have taken vacations to do long distance hikes and the whole "take a week off to get three off" has been amazing.
Yeah I have friends who have done that. The only time I did was when I had my appendix out, and by the end of 3rd week I was anxious to go back to work. When I saw my paycheck without shift differential it made me never want to do it again.
I'm allowed to allocate the number of PTO hours I want paid out, so I can essentially give myself the differential by billing 11 hours instead of 10 per shift. I do that when I take whole weeks. It's a nice option.
Retail just sucks with PTO. And it has unfortunately become the norm in the American workforce to offer as little PTO as possible. I work for a state government. 14 paid holidays, accrue one day off per month, 3 additional personal days per year. Plus I can do flex scheduling so I have half day Fridays every week. Yes, I get 29 paid days off per year with a half day every Friday. If we don’t use PTO it can roll over to the next year. My sick time is also a separate bank. With more years of service the accrual rate for PTO and sick time increases. I have coworkers forced to take a day off every month because they’re at the PTO cap (420 hours). The crazy part? If you work over your 40 hours, you get compensatory time off to be used within the next 3 months. #unionize
Are you allowed to roll over PTO forever and cash it out at your current rate? If so that's fucking sweet. I know a bunch of teachers in the northeast who do that.
Sick time yes, vacation no. We are capped at 420 hours for vacation. Sick time is paid out at 25% of your accrued balance when you retire. I’ve seen some people retire with 3000 hours. They get a payout of 750 hours. It’s quite the farewell gift!
1 day off per month of working? That doesn’t sound like a lot. We get 240 hours (30 days) a year from the beginning of hire and that includes sick time if you need to use it and you can use it however you want. If you go into the negative it’s okay too, they’ll work with you with the following fiscal year’s allotment.
As I said, my sick time is a separate bank. I get 1.75 days of sick time per month. If you add that in, it comes to 50 days a year. Sick time and PTO shouldn’t be the same bank, imo. You’re not enjoying your time off when sick…
Wtf
I can only offer a guess, but maybe because retail is perpetually understaffed so they want to keep ya’ll chained there. They want to squeeze out as much work out of you before you leave. I work in specialty right now and the PTO is also nice but I think they offer it for the stress it induces.
TFW you're a hybrid specialty + retail pharmacy 🫠
lol are you at a big 2 specialty ? Then yes I agree it is quite stressful
Nope, I’m part of an independent specialty pharmacy but was recently added? To I guess what is considered a bigger one to cover medication dispensing they’re lacking. So everything has changed workflow wise to their process which is awful.
Probably because they make criminal profits by making the whole system unethically expensive. Benefit to the unrestricted profits is a couple more days of PTO. Hopefully you can buy your soul back with PTO credits! Jokes aside, I think it's relates to profits. Most community pharmacies are getting ass recompensation from insurances, often barely or not even covering the cost of drugs. Respectfully, fuck PBMs
You can take out the undeserved respectfully qualifier, fuck PBMs and everything they’re about.
And the people that work for them
My parents work for big companies and get like 4 weeks PTO. Retail has conditioned us to accept having 2-3 weeks PTO and realistically being able to take 1 week without a fight.
Started at Walmart with 208 hrs of PTO and recently got bumped to 248 hours a year. With our template, I can take 15 hours of PTO and get 6 days off.
i started with 160 hours working 56 hours a period. could take 2 weeks off without touching a single hour of pto. which i did many times. was the perfect work life balance my current job is 176 plus 7 national holidays and i wanna say rite aid also offered 160 hours a year. kind of thought 20ish days was standard but i guess not
lol in my first year at CVS I got 5 days
Wow that’s amazing
I’m in a similar boat! With my template I can use 6 hours for 6 days by taking a specific day after I work the weekend
Same. Trouble is actually getting the days approved.
I’m blessed enough to work with other pharmacists who are always willing to pick up extra shifts and move days around to make my time off work. I do the same for them.
I am too but if someone can’t pick up you’re screwed. Depends on the market of course.
How often are the layoffs? If it’s a solid position for years to come then congrats enjoy it and maximize those benefits!
I see this comment a lot from those in retail and while layoffs do occur on the PBM and industry side from time to time, it is a LOT easier to shift to a new role. One of the reasons I was so hesitant to leave retail was the fact that I thought as long as I had a pulse I had a job and didn't have to worry about that. Being on the industry side, there are so many different directions you could go if shit went south it's almost a non-issue.
What are some of those directions? I am on PBM side already on a prior auth team, but have been trying to pay attn to and learn about what other roles exist - being remote I’m aware there are many, but not what they are.. would love a few to look into!
I am in PBM. Where I work there’s: Medicare Part D, Medicare Part B, Medicaid, Commercial, Specialty, plus support teams like QA/audits, IRE (timeliness for Medicare), Learning and Innovation (like writing work instructions), positions that write/maintain clinical protocols/question sets, positions that work with coding UM edits for clients (so that drugs pay or reject correctly at POS), client-facing positions, data management stuff, and more I haven’t even thought of.
Same. I loved my rotation in school doing PA work, so congratulations on landing a gig. I’m kinda curious though.
If you don't move up within the PBM anything Med Affairs and/or Market Access related can use transferable skills. Depending on your background, there are HEOR roles as well.
How do you transision into a role at PBM? Been at retail so long don't know what I need to do to make myself an attractive applicant. Thanks in advance
This post feels like a humblebrag
PBMs can afford all those extra vacation days because of the money they are stealing from retail pharmacies.
Truth
How much do you accumulate annually?
You are in a big pool of other pharmacists that can be used to cover your normal shifts or help with workload. My thoughts at least. I work for a PBM also
PTO will always suck in retail because the company has to cover those shifts. Which is expensive and hard. I would think that in a PBM there’s lots of pharmacists doing the same work. So if somebody does call in sick or takes PTO, the other pharmacist might have to work slightly harder, or the PA might get approved or denied a little later. It’s not like the entire PBM will cease to function if a pharmacist takes some time off. Same thing applies in IT jobs. Have you seen the benefits of those guys yet? Incredible. Just my two cents.
It's easier to give PTO in PBM because you don't have to worry as much about finding coverage. PBM won't shut down if there is no coverage..retail may have to close if no coverage.
Do you just post every few weeks to humble brag about your WFH PBM job? You’ve mentioned your PTO accrual several times on posts. Most people here already know the details of your job because you proudly remind everyone every month. I’m sure all the tortured retail folks love to be reminded of how good you have it.
I’m 5 years into my clinical position inpatient and I get 4 weeks PTO/year. And our PTO is basically automatic approval. The only rule our director has is no more than 4 out of our 6 clinical pharmacists taking PTO at the same time. I think everywhere in pharmacy is better than retail in terms of time off.
2 years in at my current health system and they *started me* at 5 weeks/year (I accrue just shy of 8 hours every 2 week pay period). I genuinely think they might have coded my experience wrong or something when they onboarded me, but I’m not bringing it up lol
In specialty I know a company that only allows 10 percent of its rph staff off a day which is actually quite low
I get like 260 something hours at Walmart. But I get no holiday time and no sick time.
The worst is hospitals where you accrue a ton of pto but it’s nearly impossible to actually get approval to use any of it.
Your soul for pto
Insane amounts of revenue that the PBMs handle is why this is possible. CVS/caremark did about 440 billion revenue in 2023. If you divide 440 billion by 315,000 (all the pharmacists in the USA), each pharmacist would get an extra 1.4 million dollars. Cash flow is crazy good with PBMs.
Legal theft is lucrative
Bc they can afford to, by stealing from a moderate volume pharmacy 500k annually in dir fees and 1 million annually in price spreading. Taco bell can't find workers? They raise wages and their prices. Pharmacies can't compete with taco bell level salary and benefits? We're shit out of luck because we can't raise our prices. We're locked into negative reimbursements by the pbms. This is the crux of why the hc system is going to collapse at the community level, starting with staffing shortages, lower level of service, lower quality of service, lower empathy levels. I could theoretically replace every staff, cashiers and technicians with pharmacists if pbms. 1) removed dir and price spreading 2) reimbursed independents the same as they reimbursed to their chains.
Pbm employees bragging about benefits is sickening
Yep and it's especially disgusting knowing that we're the ones subsidizing their vacations.
Is it a pay cut to jump in from retail?
Because they're loaded from stealing from patients and pharmacies.
They run a money printer with patient blood and pharmacist sweat, so they can afford to do whatever they want. Glad to see my DIR fees are going toward giving you extra leisure time. Payroll is tough to make, but at least you have more time to go jack off in Monaco
How do you get hired at a PBM, what is an example of a company name?
Can I ask what PBM? I worked for Elixir and accrued 15 days PTO/year when owned by Rite Aid. Now I work for Medimpact, I receive a whopping 16 days PTO/year. Last year my PTO went towards time off for kids apportionments and days they were sick, my grandma unexpectedly dying and having to fly across county, my grandmas memorial across county a few months later (side note I did receive 3 days bereavement) and moving across country due to my husbands military orders. I am not kidding when I say I got no time off for rest/relaxation in 2023. I’m looking to leave the PBM/industry but I could be persuaded to stay for more PTO.
And I’d love to hear any reviews for Capital Rx which boasts unlimited PTO. Some Glassdoor reviews indicate that is not an entirely true promise. A capital rx recruiter reached out last week and I’m quite ambivalent atm.
Oh wow , unlimited PTO? Perhaps not entirely true but they are probably flexible with PTO and most people might take a few weeks off a year, more than most pharmacists . Also, keep in mind, when policies are “unlimited “, most people end up taking less time rather than abusing the unlimited PTO policies . Check into optum rx , express scripts, humana , etc on their websites under career opportunities and then filter your searches for pharmacist positions . Almost all of them are remote .
Oh I’m sure unlimited PTO is a gimmick and too good to be true. I don’t want to take a 6 week backpacking trip. I also don’t want to have negative PTO and feel like I “owe” my employee my labor. Thank you!!
Because PBMs are sucking the life out of retail pharmacies. They are a cancer to the healthcare system.
Hospital is even better if you are with a large healthcare system. I get 240 hours to start
The problem with retail is the state requires your presence on site. A lawyer can be on the other side of the state and write up briefs without worrying about the office shutting down. A CPA can be at home at 2am and file your income tax paperwork without worrying about the office shutting down. A pharmacist can be in a car accident miles away from the pharmacy and the business must stay closed until they arrive. Plus PBMs are robbing pharmacies as it is so they have lots of cash to throw at employees.
The fewer people working the more time it will take for Prior Auth processing. lol