Feb
Walgreens spins the hell out of USA Today’s Article
Posted by The *Angriest* Pharmacist as Management, Update
By now, everyone in pharmacy world has read the USA Today article that I critiqued and ranted about in this post: http://www.theangriestpharmacist.com/2008/02/12/finally-now-they-may-listen/
As expected, CEOs everywhere shit their pants and saw their stock investments drop in value all day long. You can check the stocks on WMT, CVS, and WAG — their values over the last five days have dropped one-half or so points. I’m not sure the effect the article had on it, but I’m betting it might’ve had something to do with it. Of course, the markets are going to shit right now, so that could be it as well….
Anyway, you know the CEOs had to get the spin out to their pawns in the trenches. Here’s what Walgreens CEO Jeff Rein sent down to the pharmacy staff:
To all Walgreen employees:
Some of you may have seen a USA Today report in today’s paper about prescription errors at major drugstore chains. Unfortunately, Walgreens was included among the pharmacies highlighted. Any time a story like this appears, my biggest concern is that it will scare patients away from using medication that, in many cases, is life saving. I’m also concerned it unfairly portrays the work of our outstanding pharmacy staffs – and the efforts we make as a company – to ensure patient safety and provide them with the best care. For example, the story didn’t focus on the many positive initiatives the industry has made to ensure safety and promote pharmacists as a key part of the health care system.I’m sure many of you will get asked questions about the story, whether it’s from family and friends, patients and customers or business partners. To help you answer those questions, I’m including some talking points at the bottom of this email. (Please remember that any questions from reporters should be referred to our Corporate Communications department.) In the meantime, I can’t say enough about the tremendous effort all of you make to improve our patients’ health. Every day, I hear great stories about how you’re making a difference for them.. Thank you!
Believe me, although the national news media may not recognize the care you’re providing, it’s very much recognized by everyone within our company and by our tens of millions of pharmacy patients.
Jeff Rein
Chairman and CEOTALKING POINTS FOR FAMILY, FRIENDS, CUSTOMERS AND PATIENTS REGARDING THE USA Today REPORT:
* We’ve been in the pharmacy business for 107 years. No one has better systems or processes for filling prescriptions than we do.
* Regardless of whether a pharmacy technician is putting the pills in the bottle, a pharmacist checks and verifies every prescription before it’s dispensed.
* In the last 10 years, we’ve invested nearly $1 billion in pharmacy safety systems, safety training and new technology. That investment proves how seriously we take our responsibility to be error-free.
* Walgreens invented the electronic prescription 15 years ago. Electronic prescribing is a powerful tool for eliminating errors associated with handwriting, and we encourage its adoption by doctors.
So, what’s wrong with his points for discussion? Let’s start with point one. I think saying no one is better than you is conceited as best. Think your infallable Jeff? Ask Sears and Roebuck…Believe me, there’s lots of people with better systems than you. I worked at Wally World for a bit — and their system is better than yours. I worked at Walgreens during my first year of pharmacy school — I quit after one semester because my experiences sucks so bad. Upgrades? Maybe. But, Walmart’s technology blows yours out of the water. Your shit might as well be PDX compared to Connexus.
Point two is null and void. Pharmacists can be idiots. Techs can be idiots. Just because a pharmacist checked a tech doesn’t mean it’s right. I’ve read studies saying that techs checking techs is just as accurate as a pharmacist checking techs. Do I think that’s the right course of action? Hell no. But, it is an interesting thought. Sometimes, it might be worth it to just suck it up and hire more people. But that’d cut into profits now AND later…
Point Three? Bogus. 1 Billion dollars? Yeah right. Your profit last year was 15 billion. I seriously doubt you dumped 1 billion of that into training and your software. Why not take that billion and put it into staffing? I guarantee you that’d do more for decreasing errors than increasing your PRODUCTIVITY - which is what he’s trying to say.
Point four is an act of deferral. Placing the blame on the doctors rather than your substandard staffing and increased workload. See point 3.
With all his points, he totally misses the point! He does not address the concerns in the article at all! It’s talking about understaffed, over worked, overloaded pharmacies! It doesn’t matter if we have been doing this for 107 years and spent $1 billion on equipment to supposedly make less people more productive (but end up just causing more problems because they fail all the time, but thats another issue). Drop a pharmacy into downtown Baghdad, give them 2 RPH, 5 CPhT, and 600 Rx/day, and you are going to get allot of mistakes and pissed off customers. (There is actually a store in nearby that I refer to as the Baghdad store, for obvious reasons.)
Typical corporate/politician behavior, bring up a big issue, and instead of addressing that issue, they start talking about something else. Ridiculous. They will never listen, they are too busy seeing how they can do a self anoscopy with their own head.
Its just a defense mechanism to try and save face, even though I disagree with the USA article, never will there be a front page article on how a pharmacist at one of the “busy overworked” pharmacies saved the life of a patient. I do agree however that Wal-Mart does have a better computer system. I worked at Walgreens for one summer internship and when my contract was over I never looked back, I currently work for wally world and besides the occasional rude patients have no complaints.
Well, Walgreens needs to spend a little more money on their prescription safety systems. As a hospital pharmacist, I have to choose a retail store just like every other Joe Blow out there. I chose Walgreens…….my family had three misfills last year….out of about 75 prescriptions filled for us last year. If I wasn’t a pharmacist, the errors probably wouldn’t have been caught.
I think the best approach is this, if you work for walgreens print out the “talking points,” carry them with you. When someone asks about the article pull the list out and read them. Be sure to make odd faces of confusion as you read the points, and throw in the occaisional “WTF, this does not make any sense.” The point is to illustrate to friends, family and customers how freaking ridiculous these talking points really are.
Finally, in the article walgreens also passes the buck to pharmacists and states they are trained professionals who make the decisions. My response is this: When the majority of your trained professionals are saying more help is needed in the pharmacy and you refuse to provide it in order to protect profit, who is really at fault when an error occurs?
well walgreens again,this looks like someone has been caught in the act of pharmacist untrained again.. I seen on the web site http://www.stopalldiscrimination.org walgreens corporation stay in the news with bad press i dont shop thier anymore and advise all my friends and family stay away from thier if they want to stay alive…..
David: What did you just say?
KDUBZ: Thats fricken hilarious! And great point in ¶ 2.
Check your state BOP website - a permitee or licensee is guilty of unethical/unprofessional conduct and can be disciplined/fined if they claim professional superiority in compounding or dispensing prescription orders. Any activists out there want to report WAG?!
[...] I also gave him my take on the article and how increased volume (not decreased volume as Walgreens would tell you) inherently leads to more prescription errors. I then explained the error that lead to the [...]
I would advise people who use walgreen pharmacy to be careful and pay attention. Many of busy walgreens are understaffed and employees are overworked. With the pharmacist “I don’t care attitude” contributes to the errors. I work there and I am continually astound that walgreens really do not care; Located across the street from a hospital, we are beat up from customers, work, and pharmacist lack of help. Our sales are declining which is no big surprise and corporate doesn’t care, because they cut employees hours, go figure. I am a student now and just trying to tuff it out until graduation. For customers please be caution!
How is he trying to save face. do you honestly think that employees are going to leave because of an article in a newspaper? i think not. no one but employees saw this.
You’re a fucking idiot Jesse. USA Today is one of the ten biggest newspapers in the country — regardless of the quality of their journalism or their political slant (which I am not aware of which way they go), they are a large venue. Alexa.com puts their online website as one of the 4-500 most popular pages on the internet…getting about 60 million page views a month…
Nope no one saw it…
The point of the post wasn’t that he was sending that to keep his employees from quitting. That’s retarded of you to even think. It is a crappy attempt to smooth talk the customer that asks about the article with bullshit catch phrases and smooth talk.
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