A sign informing customers they cannot pick up their prescriptions due a pharmacist not being available is seen last week at the drive-thru of the Walgreens Pharmacy in Franklin.
NOAH CRENSHAW | DAILY JOURNAL
Jennifer Gwin is a mother to 21 adopted children with different disabilities, and lately, she’s been scrambling to get the medications they need.
Gwin, of Greenwood, has 50 medications to fill regularly for her children, making her a regular at the local Walgreens Pharmacy on U.S. 31 and Smith Valley Road. She rarely had issues filling her prescriptions until recently, as Walgreens has been facing pharmacy staff issues.
The pharmacy has been opening and closing at unpredictable hours, sometimes days at a time, because a pharmacist isn’t available to work, Gwin said. And when the pharmacy is open, it takes days to fill a prescription because of the backlog.
The medications some of her children need are necessary for them to live, preventing trips to the hospital. Some are needed behavioral medications as well for her children with autism.
“So many of my kids need these to stay out of the hospital, you know, medications that keep them home and healthy,” Gwin said.”It’s been a little scary at times because I’ve ran out of several.”
While Gwin recognizes her circumstances are unique, she knows this is an issue everyone is facing right now.
“I’ve gone to Facebook and such, you know, and asked groups, ‘is everybody else having the same issue?’ And I just get an overwhelming response of yes. It’s crazy,” she said.
Pharmacy staffing has become a nationwide issue. Customers are finding themselves calling in to fill a medication, only to learn a pharmacy is closed, or they waiting longer than average for medications to be filled when the pharmacy is open.
As labor shortages continue to plague other industries, especially in hospitals and private doctors’ offices, pharmacies are also struggling to keep up with demand.
Labor shortage woes
Like with any labor shortage, it is difficult to pinpoint one direct cause, but the health care industry has been exhausted by the pandemic, community pharmacists included, said Stephanie Arnett, president elect of the Indiana Pharmacists Association and director of student career development at the Purdue University School of Pharmacy.
Stress in the workplace of a community pharmacy is a strong contributing factor to pharmacists or techs leaving to find work elsewhere. More duties have been added on to local pharmacy staffs since the pandemic, as they are now tasked with giving COVID-19 tests and vaccines, along with continuing to fill medications and administering routine vaccines.
“Initially, everybody was all hands on deck, it would save the world. But when you’re in over two years of that, it puts a really big stress on our workers,” Arnett said.
Staffing issues are hitting nearly every pharmacy locally, not just one. For Gwin, she has since started moving her prescriptions from Walgreens to CVS and Walmart. But that has also been a challenge because CVS is also very busy and employees had trouble getting a hold of Walgreens employees to transfer the prescriptions, she said.
Casey DeArmitt Hutchens waited a week to get one of her son’s ADHD medication prescriptions filled from the Franklin Walgreens, when it normally takes a day.
Due to staffing shortages, the Franklin pharmacy has been consistently closed on Sundays and Wednesdays and with limited hours during the week, Hutchens said. But on June 1, the pharmacy announced it would close from then until June 7. She tried to transferred her prescriptions to another location, but had difficulties with insurance.
The Franklin Walgreens then opened on June 3, despite the announcement it would be closed, but could not fill new prescriptions because their system was down, Hutchens said. So, she drove to a Greenwood Walgreens on State Road 135, where she got her son’s medication filled, nearly a week after she first requested the refill.
“I do, I feel for the local employees. I do, because I’m sure they’re tired of getting yelled at,” Hutchens said. “At the end of the day though, they’re not dispensing Tic-Tacs — people need their medications.”
Greenwood resident Mandie Lovelace had a similar experience waiting nearly a week for her son’s medication. She arrived at a Walgreens location in Greenwood and waited in a long line, to find out the medicine was not ready for pickup, when she was told by the pharmacy it would be.
She returned two days later — as the pharmacy was closed over those days — and was told the medicine was out of stock. Her son, who is on the autism spectrum, had to go without his medication for his last few days of school, she said.
“He ended up getting sick at school because he got so anxious without his medication,” Lovelace said. “He’s 17, so he knew what was going on … he was like, ‘Mom, what am I gonna do?’ then I said, ‘Well, we’re just gonna take it one day at a time.’”
Closing a pharmacy for an entire day is usually a last-resort option, Arnett said. By law, a store cannot open a pharmacy without a pharmacist in the building, leaving no other option but to close.
“Personally knowing some of the leaders that work for these companies, that’s the least favorite part of their job right now,” Arnett said.
Not one overnight solution
Walgreens declined a request for an interview, and instead sent a statement from corporate spokesperson Kris Lathan. She wrote that stores with staffing shortages adjust hours of operation “with the goal of creating minimal disruption for customers and patients.”
Lathan also wrote that patients can be transferred to the nearest open Walgreens, if their primary location is closed. Adjusted store hours are reflected on the store locator, which is updated throughout the day at the Walgreens website and on the Walgreens mobile app, she said.
CVS Pharmacy also declined an interview, and Amy Thibault, lead director of the pharmacy’s retail communications, said in a written statement that the pharmacy is not experiencing shortages in the Franklin area.
“Our pharmacy teams have been on the frontlines of the pandemic response for more than two years, administering COVID-19 tests and providing life-saving vaccinations. We’ve been successful in ensuring our stores remain open to help support our customers, patients and communities and are not experiencing any staffing issues in the Franklin, IN area,” Thibault said in the statement.
Major chain pharmacies, such as Walgreens and CVS, have attempted to address staffing shortages by raising pay for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, Arnett said. Sign-on bonuses are also usually offered for new hires now.
It is not a problem to be solved overnight, though, Arnett said. There also isn’t one solution.
There is some hope with the pay increases, sign on bonuses, and the number of graduates coming out of Indiana’s three pharmacy schools at Purdue University, Butler University and Manchester University will increase. All three schools still have steady enrollment, but it is hard to predict where the graduates will go after school, or if they will stay in Indiana, Arnett said.
Pharmacists and technicians have more — and sometimes less stressful — opportunities beyond working at a chain retail community pharmacy, she said, such as working in labs or directly in a hospital or clinic.
“The pandemic has been really, really cruel to the well-being of frontline health care employees. And people are looking for something different,” Arnett said.
