What the hell is going on with pharmacies

[thinkponk48]

There are three pharmacies in my town. All three have restricted opening hours. I stood in line for 25 min a few days ago to get a prescription filled. I was told it had to be ordered and pick it up today. Got there Today and pharmacy closed!!!!

Are companies not paying properly or are we suddenly short of pharmacists

Im not even talking about not being able to get certain drugs I understand supply chain issues but I don't understand the staffing issues. Surely this is big chains cutting costs

We have lots like that here in supermarkets, but a lot of the time there is no pharmacist and you can only get over the counter medication. They take your prescription, but you have to come back to pick it up.

And we are advised to go to a pharmacy instead of a GP! It is a joke.

Interesting about Lloyds in Sainsbury’s. I stopped going there about 6 months ago as it was always a massive queue to even check if they had your prescription and then another half an hour to collect, which is fine but you had to join the massive queue again.

i changed to Tesco pharmacy and they're fabulous.

My local boots hasn't had the "over the counter" section open in months. You have to queue for the pharmacy making everything take longer. It's an absolute joke.

@AllOutofEverything I was just going to say exactly that. We have 3 Pharmacies in our town. Only one opens 'late' - until 6pm and for 1 hour on Bank Holidays. The nearest supermarket pharmacy is 15 - 20 miles away. Our minor injuries unit is only open 9-5 Mon - Fri and our A&E is 23 miles away. But still the PCT (or whatever they call themselves this week) keep telling us to go to our pharmacy or MIU as 1st port of call. It's a joke. No wonder Pharmacists are fed up.

Our tiny little Boots pharmacy has struggled to get a regular pharmacist for quite a while now. There was a huge backlog of prescriptions waiting to be made up, I was on the point of running out of my meds, despite allowing two weeks leeway last year. It got quite worrying, so we all now have our prescriptions done online by Pharmacy2U and they're delivered in the post. No complaints so far about their service.

Our Boots is the same often closed mornings, but somehow manage to get Pharmacist for the afternoon. Any prescription seems to be available after 2 next day. Tesco is so much better and we have an independent pharmacy in the next village who are very helpful and the staff have stayed the same for a number of years.

@RainyReadingDay I once did that and whilst it may work well for regular meds but not if you urgently require antibiotics or have a really painful UTI or something where you need medication urgently.

You can’t get through to the Doctors to change this one off prescription to your local pharmacy (as its almost impossible to get through on the phone).

There must be about 5/6 pharmacies within a mile or so of me. So no issues with opening hours but they always seem to never had the items I need.

The two previously independent pharmacies in my town have both been taken over by Boots.

One (the nearest one to the surgery) doesn’t open at weekends and shares a pharmacist with a branch in another town, so closes randomly without warning. The other is tiny with only one till so long queues as people wait for prescriptions while others are waiting to buy toiletries.

I’ve found an independent pharmacy in another village that does free prescription delivery, so I’ve transferred to that one for my prescriptions.

@BettyBoo123456 Yes you are quite right. It works well for regular meds but not if you need something that day. I needed painkillers for a bout of sciatica and my GP had to change the prescription to Boots for that so I didn't have to wait.

Nc so not identified out of work!

I'm a pharmacy tech of 14 years, "small" but incredibly busy store under a GP surgery, big chain. The change over the past 14 years is astonishing.

When I first started we had 3 counter/ reception staff, 2 ACT/ higher level dispensers, 8 dispensers, 2 pharmacist's and one manager. I look back on these years with great fondness - moral was great, we were often tripping over one another but workload was manageable, we could spend time with the patients without rushing and created great bonds with the community.

Now we are running on: 6 dispensers who also cover the reception, 1 ACT, 1 locum pharmacist and we currently are finding a new manager but preference is one who can also cover the pharmacists role. The pharmacy hasn't lost patients, we've increased due to pharmacies closing locally, targets have increased, staff and pay have not. We are under a huge amount of pressure.

Colleagues have left for hospital roles or working in aldi / lidl the pay is significantly better (currently I earn a little bit over nmw), less stress/risk, more support and appreciation.

It been hurrendous since covid - stock has been hit / miss on both pom/ps (retail and pharmacy meds), most weeks we have a backlog of owed items - ie a item will flag in stock with x supplier and as soon as you go to order it'll flash up that its long term out of stock - this used to be a odd occurrence now its expected.

Winter has been awful for staff sickness so running on skeleton staff - when you're running the pharmacy on one (locum) pharmacist and two dispensers you're firefighting throughout the week and creating a mountain of work to get through alongside angry patients due to nothing being ready (understable!). This snowballs to not closing on time and staff morale being incrdibly low.

I'm hoping it'll all improve soon...

Pharmacytea community pharmacists are amazing. I don't do Xmas gifts much but always get one for the local pharmacy. They're a really valuable thing to have IMHO.

Do you feel the number of customers has increased and you need more staff than before, or would it be okay if you were put back up to the previous staffing level?

Thank you - I do love working in pharmacy- I've had the privilege to meet and form really lovely relationships with some of our patients - its great to see them week in and out (and we do love the break room christmas stash - it lasts us until Easter!)

I think we'd be managing well with previous staffing levels - you cannot give a good reliable service with minimal people. Somewhere something is going to give and I do worry for the future its unsustainable.

It’s sad, community pharmacy is really, really struggling. Round here the independents are OK but the big multiples are struggling. There just aren’t enough staff and the big multiples tend to be the ones with more weekend and late opening so more hours to fill. Pharmacists and technicians are leaving to work in primary care where it’s less stressful and less chance of getting spat at!

Once a pharmacy is known to be struggling it makes it harder to recruit staff. Would you rather locum in a nice well run pharmacy or one where they’ve recently had to call the police due to angry customers? Also it’s incredibly hard for the Health Board to remove a pharmacy’s contract, even when patients are getting an awful service. This is in Scotland, but I assume also true in the other nations.

I used to work for Boots, the last 10 years I was involved in pharmacy in one way or another. I left last year at absolute breaking point. I know COVID is over but my god that broke my whole team...and unfortunately it sounds like things are getting worse, never thought I'd say that. Pharmacists and their dispensers & healthcare staff really are the hidden/forgotten heros of the NHS and I take my hat off to every one of them 😁

I left a local chain recently, my GP sends repeat prescriptions on the same day of request. The pharmacy they were sent to took three weeks to dispense. 85% of staff in there were defensive with an attitude. They were clearly feeling the pressure.

However, they are a for profit business not the NHS and need to pay decent wages/employ enough staff to provide the service required.

My GP was clearly sick of the situation, as he handed me a prescription for something new he told me to take it in and tell them he wanted me to have it now, this morning, make them dispense it. I had to wait 90 mins.

I switched to a pharmacy in a supermarket, it is ready within 36 hours of receipt.

But they’re not the NHS, they are working for a for profit company. There’s a huge difference. The fewer staff they employ the more in the coffers for shareholders.

@thinkponk48

It all comes down to money I fear. Some while back our local independent pharmacy put up a sign saying that it would no longer open on Saturday nor would it provide any "first aid" for minor injuries as "the Health Authority" did not fund this.

It is because independent pharmacies are closing that care about their staff. With large corporations taking these over, the push is to squeeze as much money out as possible. And if there is not enough money to be made, they just invest elsewhere instead.

Major shortage of community pharmacists. The hospitals/industry pay more.

independent pharmacies are struggling to keep afloat as they don’t get paid enough by the govt per item they dispense to cover overheads now due to rising costs. I was reading an article from an independent who said some stuff he loses money on, he’s only allowed to claim y for it but it costs y x2.

will try and find the article. It seems a disaster in a par with the dentist contracts/payments.

I had to queue for 90 mins the other day

www.chemistanddruggist.co.uk/CD136418/Sector-in-crisis-Thousands-of-pharmacies-at-risk-of-closure-as-inflation-bites

www.thepharmacist.co.uk/news/three-months-on-how-pharmacies-are-dealing-with-the-cost-of-living-crisis/

The problem, is partly, spiralling drug prices. ‘Only the other week, I had a prescription for a drug for a four-year-old with asthma, which had previously been £5 but had shot up to £58,’ says Kolia, who regularly works 50-hour weeks.

‘I had to dispense it because my conscience wouldn’t let me do otherwise. But the Government will only reimburse us for £53, as that is the price it has settled at. If this keeps happening, pharmacies like mine will develop cashflow problems and may even go under.’

www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11478343/Pharmacies-LOSING-money-drugs-issued-NHS-prescriptions.html

It's the same as most other areas of life - large companies milking money out of the state and ordinary people without rewarding its staff then wondering why it is falling apart
Pharmacists were also unfortunate as most clinical professions had one body that dealt with registration, fitness to practice, etc and one that fought for the professional image, wages and status of the profession. The doctors had the GMC and the BMA, nurses had the NMC and the RCN but pharmacists just had one body, RPSGB, which did a very poor job of standing up for the profession. Even when they split it into two bodies the representation has been very feeble

Some make a huge profit, you’ve only got to look at Day Lewis’s published accounts for an example of a high street pharmacy chain making a whopping profit. I don’t use them anymore. Extremely poor service.

We are very, very, lucky to have 6 within a 5 minute drive! We have our satellite village GP dispensary, an Independent Pharmacy attached to the main GP, a Lloyds, a Boots, another independent, and a Tesco's.

The thing I would say is that they are all heaving. The pharmacy attached to the GP's, which I was in the other day, has a wall of bags full of prescriptions. There must have been 500/600 - some people had two or three bags. There are a lot of people needing a lot of drugs! What I don't see is people bringing in scripts for fulfillment, just people collecting, so I think round here, we all have automated requests, sent to the pharmacy of your choice. Maybe that makes it more efficient??