http://www.pharmalot.com/2010/07/a-former-medco-pharmacist-is-on-a-hunger-strike
From the article:
Pharmacist complained to Medco managers that a new policy requiring pharmacists to process at least 45 to 55 prescriptions an hour was “unreasonably high” and led to a growing number of errors that placed patients in jeopardy.
“After the merger, we assessed the operational needs, and we wanted to make sure we are as efficient as possible,” Henry said.
Henry would not comment on a possible plant closure. “We remain committed to Willingboro,” he said. “We believe the pharmacy there is part of our network that we offer and we have a highly skilled workforce there.”
About 1,100 employees work at the plant since the layoffs, still making it one of the biggest local employers.
The plant is the largest automated mail-service pharmacy on the East Coast and it has the ability to dispense more than 1 million prescriptions a week
If you do the math… working under the presumption of 20% new Rxs and 80% refills… would result in 200,000 new Rxs/wk.. If a RPh can review 45 Rxs/hr.. that would require 111 RPH’s to review that many Rxs… that doesn’t take into account other duties that a RPH many have to do in regards to the entire process… Presume that another 39 RPh’s/wk to handle the rest of the duties… making a total of 150 Rph’s to operate this facility.
Recently CVS put out staffing levels of 11 Rxs/ tech hour.. down from 10 Rxs/tech hour
If you take the 1,000,000 Rxs/wk and use the balance of 850 employees … results in nearly 1200 Rxs/tech hr.
One must also presume that there is a lot more man hours devoted to the packing of the meds for shipment than is required at retail.
I realize that these mail order firms are highly automated.. but .. all the necessary functions needed to properly process a Rx .. to “process” a Rx for every 3 SECONDS at the tech level… seems to take the “speed of light” to a whole new meaning/level…
http://www.ncpanet.org/pdf/leg/sep11/mail_order_waste.pdf
Here is 89 different groups of meds returned to a local pharmacy to be destroyed that was originally sent out by mail order … apparently on auto-fill… values up to the tens of thousands of dollars for a single patient
Filed under: General Problems
Sounds like this state board sits in the pocket of the all mighty corporate pharmacy companies. What would it take for the FL SBOP to wake up and start taking patient safety serious. Let a fake pharmacist work for an entire year without catching them, and then get news coverage for their stupidity (OOPS already happened. They need to take a page from the Oregon State Board and treat pharmacy like a profession not a deli counter. Maybe someone should ask them at a meeting who they are there to protect. The deep pockets of BIG PHARMA/MAIL ORDER/PBMs or the population of FL.