13 Ways to Help Your Pharmacist (and Pharmacy Technicians)

***PERSONAL OPINIONS ONLY***Not those necessarily of my employer(s) and/or affiliation(s).

In case you haven’t heard, there’s a crisis brewing, beyond the pandemic. Actually, it’s a product of the pandemic. It’s that your local pharmacist and/or pharmacy technicians are burning out, and it’s affecting patient care.

Pharmacists are leaving community practice in droves. Due to pharmacists and pharmacy technicians having to give vaccines and COVID-19 tests in addition to all their duties of filling prescriptions, coupled with their salaries decreasing, pharmacists are now overwhelmed at the retail pharmacy. Pharmacy technicians often make less wages than fast-food workers now as well.

This has been decades in the making. Due to a large increase in the number of pharmacy schools in the past 20 years, there have been more and more pharmacists entering the US marketplace, which on one hand is a good thing, because pharmacists are the most accessible healthcare professionals near most US households.

It’s a bad thing, however, because there were no jobs for a while. That drove down pharmacist salaries. Technicians (in my personal opinion) have never been paid what they are worth. Now, due to all the pressures and additional burdens on pharmacists and technicians during the pandemic, literally with them risking their lives every day to help their patients, they’ve just decided to walk out (and rightfully so). The (bad) Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) are also crushing reimbursement rates for pharmacists as well, which forces them to fill even more scripts and provide more vaccines in order to make up for decreasing reimbursement rates again by the bad PBMs. Some PBMs actually reimburse at rates LOWER than what it cost the pharmacy to acquire the drug! (Although thankfully, that’s changing slowly now that states may regulate PBMs.)

Now, retail chains are starting to show huge sign-on bonuses for pharmacists because they’re desperate for bodies, but the strings attached with many of them are unrealistic. That and pharmacists and technicians are so stressed out and overworked with little to no help that it’s just not worth the extra money.

While all of us in pharmacy are aware of this, I’m not sure the lay public is….maybe they just see longer lines at the pharmacy counter and think that it is due to a “slow” pharmacist or technician.

I’m here to state 100% that it is NOT their fault!

But I’m not going to sit around and complain for my first profession either. Instead, I’m going to share with you what you can do to help your local pharmacy technicians and pharmacists. And please — I ask you personally to help them, because if you don’t, you may not have a pharmacist or pharmacy in your neighborhood for long, esp. in rural communities.

How to Help Your Local Pharmacist and Pharmacy Technicians:

1. Thank them for their service — Just thank your pharmacist or pharmacy technician. Don’t be a high-maintenance customer. We all understand that getting your medication is absolutely vital to staying alive in nearly all instances — so appreciate that they are they for you and please be patient with them — they’re doing the very best that they can right now.
2. Ask your pharmacist what they need to do their jobs safely and effectively, then do it — Many pharmacists are involved at the state level and can tell you exactly who to call and what to share. Another place to look is at your state pharmacy association.
3. Schedule your vaccines with them in advance — Anything you can do to schedule your appointments with the pharmacy is appreciated. It streamlines and can decrease the last-second rushes that happen at a pharmacy. Many of the chains have online scheduling for vaccines — please use it and schedule your appointment in advance.
4. Call in your prescription refills to the automated system — ditto to the above. Do everything you can to automate your refills. If you can sign up for texting auto refills, do it. Anywhere where you can use technology to decrease your wait time and smooth out their workflow would be a positive thing. If your prescription ran out — call your doctor for a refill — don’t make your pharmacy do it. YOU should be in charge of your healthcare.
5. Have your doctor send electronic (e)-prescriptions to your pharmacy directly — Same as #4, but with new prescriptions.
6. If you see something, say something — Filling out little surveys on big receipts isn’t going to cut it anymore. If you see a long line, with the phone ringing off the hook and one body back behind the pharmacy counter doing everything they can to keep up — the profession needs you to NOT ask for the store manager. What you need to do is call your State Board of Pharmacy and tell them the precise store you were at, when you were there, and that they did not have enough staff to keep the pharmacy moving, and that it is endangering the public. (By the way, Boards of Pharmacy are there to protect the public — not to make pharmacists’ lives easier.) Here is a list of all the state boards of pharmacy.
7. Call or write your Congressional and Senate Reps — I know, the government is not as helpful as we’d like them to be at this point. But, your Congressional and Senate reps need to know that you have the back of your pharmacist. Right now, that means backing HR2759/S1362 (esp. if you’re in a rural area), and/or supporting pharmacists becoming healthcare providers under the Social Security Act so they can be paid for their services. (Did you know pharmacists aren’t even considered healthcare providers under Federal Law? That absolutely must be fixed!)
8. Ditto on #7, but with your State reps — Tell your local state reps that you support pharmacists being recognized as legal healthcare providers too — many states have started to recognize pharmacists as providers. Does yours? Ask. And if not, ask why not?
9. File your NEW 2022 prescription insurance cards with them BEFORE you need it — And make sure you take your new prescription card to the pharmacy in the new year. January is often the hardest month of all for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians because 70% of healthcare plans change on 1/1 each year in the US, and people don’t take their new cards to the pharmacy. Try to stock up on what you need before the new year, then stay away from the pharmacy if you can for the first 2 weeks of the year — that’s often the highest volume and biggest wait times of the entire year for patients.
10. If the pharmacy is closed for lunch or for the evening, please respect the closure — Seriously — horror stories online about people literally putting their foot in the door when pharmacists are trying to lock the gate for the night. We’re all busy and rushed, but please — the likelihood that the pharmacist is shutting down after a 12–14 hour day on their feet is highly probable. No one would do that at the doctor or lawyer’s office, so why try it at the pharmacy?
11. If you’re in HR, employee benefits, or a CFO at your company, ask your PBM if they’ll be providing a fully transparent contract, and act as a fiduciary for you. Then ask what their dispensing fees are to pharmacies in their networks. If you work with a decent, honest PBM, they won’t be reimbursing pharmacies unfairly or playing games like spread pricing with pharmacies. A good broker or advisor knows who the good and bad PBMs are….
12. Sign the petition to acknowledge pharmacists as what they truly are — legal healthcare providers!
13. Call or email the c-suites of your pharmacy chain and ask for more pay for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. Don’t call the store. They can’t affect any major change. But the CEOs of the big chains can. (And, BTW, there are zero pharmacist CEOs of any of the top 10 major pharmacy chains in the US right now. Zero. How can you run a business without even knowing the rules/laws/practice of pharmacy or the burden of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians?) These leaders need to hear from you. Just google your chain’s headquarters and you should be able to find an email address or phone # to voice your concerns right up at the top.

We owe a huge debt of gratitude to our healthcare professionals who got us through the pandemic thus far….let’s make sure we support them and not crush them in return. Please — even if you just take only one step above, that would get the profession of pharmacy potentially back on track. Pharmacists really do want to help their patients, but it goes both ways. Pharmacists were there for the population, now it’s time for everyone to be there for them — before we have no one at all.

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Erin L. Albert is a pharmacist who worked for two different large community practice pharmacy chains prior to the pandemic, a lawyer, and an author. The opinions above are her own, and not necessarily those of her employers or any affiliations.