Pharmacies cutting hours amid staff shortages

Starting this spring, routine visits to pick up medicine at the pharmacy after work might require more advance planning than usual.

Officials from major pharmacy chains say staffing problems at pharmacies are the culprit. They are facing a shortage of pharmacists and pharmacy assistants, and some are making changes to hours, closing earlier and attempting to adapt to a dearth of workers.

Pharmacists, in the meantime, are contending with the stress and pressure of working in a high-speed retail pharmacy environment.

Effective in March, about 4,600 of Walmart’s pharmacies will start closing at 7 p.m. instead of 9 p.m., according to Walmart spokesperson Ashley Nolan. Hours also will change at two-thirds of CVS’s retail pharmacy locations beginning in March.

At Rite-Aid last year, pharmacies began closing for half an hour between 1:30 and 2 p.m to allow the team to take a lunch break. Spokesperson Catherine Carter says the company remains focused on recruiting.

A busy job

The workload placed on retail pharmacists, sometimes called community pharmacists, factors into the labor shortage, according to Monica Skomo, associate professor and associate dean of academic affairs at Duquesne University’s School of Pharmacy. It also can make a trip to the pharmacy take longer for the customer.

“Not only are they filling prescriptions and talking with doctors’ offices and counseling patients and taking care of their patients from a prescription standpoint, but they’re also supplying vaccines and trying to run a pharmacy, as well,” Skomo said.

“I think really what’s happening is pharmacists are still going to be doing all of those things, but it is going to take them longer,” she added. “For instance, if someone is coming in for a vaccine, they might not be able to get it when they walk in, or they might have to wait a few days for an appointment.”

Working in a retail pharmacy, as compared with a hospital pharmacy or other pharmaceutical setting, offers unique stressors, said Dr. Randall Smith, senior associate dean at the University of Pittsburgh’s school of pharmacy.

“You can’t have a pharmacy open without a pharmacist there, and, if you only have one pharmacist, that means they can’t go anywhere else (during the day,)” he said.

Differences in hospital settings

Hospital pharmacists have different responsibilities and a different everyday workload than retail pharmacists, according to Michael Sekhon, Excela Health’s pharmacy director. They’re responsible for making rounds to check in on patients who are in the hospital, setting up IVs and more but tend to have a higher amount of interaction with their patients.

At Excela hospitals, he said, pharmacist staffing is going “pretty well,” though there still is a dearth of technicians and assistants.

“Some of the more recent hires I’ve had over the past year, they’re coming from retail to hospitals. There’s a shift,” said Sekhon. “Pharmacy is a small world, and I have colleagues who work for some of the other places. And they tell me how bad it is. They want out.”

Allegheny Health Network’s VP of pharmacy, Laura Mark, noted specialized pharmacists who stay in school for an additional year are sometimes harder to find, but, as a whole, the health system is not having “as much” of a shortage of pharmacists.

Hospital pharmacists have a different support system than retail pharmacists, she said.

“When you think about retail pharmacy, they might have a pharmacist for however many hours a day and one technician, which is quite stressful,” she said. “(A hospital pharmacist) is actually integrated into the patient care team, whether they’re on the nursing unit or working in the inpatient pharmacy in the hospital. They often have other counterparts as far as pharmacists and technicians.”

More new pharmacy students are showing interest in hospital roles or jobs other than retail pharmacy, Smith said. Six or seven years ago, he said, 60% of Pitt’s pharmacy class said they wanted to go into community pharmacy as a career. This past year, only about 15% said the same.

“I think it’s the quality of life and stress,” Smith said. “All of the people who go into pharmacy are pretty much interested in helping people and being responsible, and they don’t want to make a mistake. They don’t want bad events with medications. Most pharmacists want to interact with patients, not every pharmacist, but most pharmacists. I think that’s what’s attractive about those other jobs.”

Pharmacists in training

Even before the pandemic, enrollment at pharmacy schools was on the decline, according to Skomo. Right now, pharmacist enrollment is down at Duquesne.

“It’s been a nationwide trend for less people to be interested in pharmacy and more interested in other health care professions,” she said. “Sometimes, these things do go into cycles, and, right now, our enrollment has gone down over the last couple of years. We would love to see that rebound, especially now that there are all these opportunities.”

Enrollment isn’t down at Pitt, Smith noted, but applications are.

“We have realized this was going to be a problem about six years ago, so we started a recruiting program. We’ve filled our class every year, but the number of applicants has declined, and that’s a national trend,” he said. “We’ve enrolled the same number every year for the last 10 years, but what has changed is we used to have seven or eight applicants per seat, and now it’s down to two or three applicants per seat.”

Completing pharmacy school typically takes six years for a student straight out of high school, who goes through two years of pre-pharmacy training and four years in a professional program. Some students who already have completed their bachelor’s degree skip the pre-pharmacy phase, but their training still takes about four years.

“There have been some concerted efforts to get that word out there about the pharmacy profession itself,” Skomo said. “We’re hoping it is going to start paying off sometime soon, but, right now, for our enrollment, we would still like to see it higher.”

Fleeing customers

In recent months at Hayden’s Pharmacy, a local pharmacy chain with three locations in Westmoreland County, president and CEO Ed Christofano has seen an influx of new customers. One new customer, he said, mentioned having to wait a week to get a prescription at a chain pharmacy and mentioned wanting to switch to an independent one as a result.

“We have had customers come into our independent operations looking for a better pharmacy experience and having the product in stock,” he added. “I think we are seeing an influx . People are demanding a different experience for their pharmacy needs.”

Nicholas Roperti works as a pharmacist at Town & Country Pharmacy, which his grandfather, Francis Roperti, founded in New Kensington in 1957. The family-run pharmacy is staffed by himself; his father, Anthony; and his sister, Courtney. His mother had worked there until the pandemic.

They have four other employees, one of whom is attending pharmacy school.

Roperti, who graduated from Duquesne University’s School of Pharmacy in 2021, said the three of them are able to keep up with their business. What they need now is a delivery driver — Roperti was handling deliveries on Wednesday.

“We’re fortunate that Courtney and I both went to pharmacy school, so it’s not just Dad and Mom anymore,” he said.

Roperti said he went to pharmacy school only because he knew he could work at his family’s business. He would not want to work at a chain, where he said pharmacists are overworked with 10- to 12-hour shifts.

Roperti said he would like to pick up some business from customers leaving chains because of curtailed hours and other reasons. He said they have acquired some already who said they got fed up with poor customer service, including long lines and long hold times when trying to call, at chain and grocery store pharmacies.

Roperti doesn’t anticipate changing the pharmacy’s hours, currently 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekends.

At Hayden’s Pharmacy locations, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m to 3 p.m. on Saturdays, there are two or three pharmacists in the pharmacy at any given time, he said. One of them is Christofano, who is a licensed pharmacist.

Having more than one pharmacist on the job at a time allows duties such as filling prescriptions and administering vaccines to be more evenly divided.

“For patients that are sick to have to wait three or four or five hours for a prescription, that’s unacceptable,” Christofano said, adding that the pharmacy’s normal wait times are under 20 minutes. “The pharmacy is the last place that you would want to wait when you don’t feel well.”

At Mainline Pharmacy, an independent pharmacy with 11 locations across Pennsylvania, co-owner Jack Moschgat described a similar influx of new customers looking to avoid wait times at chain pharmacies. At the Mainline Murrysville location, hours recently were extended to allow the pharmacy to close at 7 p.m. instead of 6 p.m.

Mainline is “pretty well staffed” at all of its locations, he said.

“We don’t have a whole lot of turnover through our stores. Generally, people who start working here stay for pretty long periods of time,” Moschgat said. “We have had some (new customers) just from people not being satisfied with the service that they were receiving elsewhere.”

When a pharmacist gets overwhelmed with work at a pharmacy, it can be difficult to catch up, leading to longer wait times, he added.

“It’s not the employees at those stores’ fault,” he said. “They are doing the best that they can. But, if you are understaffed, it’s impossible to keep up or catch up once you get behind.”