Local pharmacists raise concerns about current working conditions

It took Bled Tanoe five years to reach the point of no-return with her employer, Walgreens.

“Some days you had good days, some days you had very hard days where you are just trying to get through the day,” she said.

Tanoe worked as a pharmacist at a Walgreens in Oklahoma. Gradually she began to see duties increase to the point she felt patients’ lives were in danger.

“In the morning, you’d be opening and there would be just patients waiting for you in the drive-through, or in the front to either pick up prescriptions or get vaccinated,” she remembered. “And the phones are ringing.”

And help was limited.

But no matter how many pharmacy technicians a company assigns, the pharmacist is still the only one who can perform certain duties — such as signing off on every prescription — and administering vaccines.

Tanoe decided to quit at a time when pharmacy-based vaccinations sharply rose — due mostly to the COVID-19 pandemic. Immunizing patients is a relatively new task for pharmacists — but, in recent years, it’s really taken off.

“Community pharmacies are the place where people get vaccines,” said Todd Brown, president of the Massachusetts Independent Pharmacists Association.

In fact, a recent report found pharmacies now account for more than 60 percent of influenza vaccinations, half of those for pneumococcal infection and about a fifth of injections for H-P-V.

That glut of work is on top of rising prescription volume. Last year, pharmacists filled some 4.76 billion prescriptions — a number that has increased every year for the last twenty.

At the same time, Brown said, reimbursements for prescriptions — what the pharmacy gets back from various insurers — has been dropping — to the point even large chains are feeling it. The result of that: staff cuts and schedule changes.

“A lot of chains now are reducing their hours,” he said. “Some are not opening on Sunday. Twenty-four hour stores are becoming 18-hour stores.”

And some chain stores are even closing. In fact, Walgreens announced earlier this year the closure of 150 U.S. stores and 300 in the U.K. That move might save the company money, but it threatens to worsen working conditions at Walgreens stores that will remain open.

This week, because of current working conditions, a handful of Walgreens pharmacists and others walked off their jobs — the action affecting a few disparate states, but not, the company said, Massachusetts.

Walgreens told Boston 25 News that only one store actually closed because of the ‘disruption.’ In a statement, the company said it recognized the ‘unprecedented effort’ of its employees during a difficult time.

“We are engaged and listening to the concerns raised by some of our team members,” the company statement said. “We are committed to ensuring that our entire pharmacy team has the support and resources necessary to continue to provide the best care to our patients while taking care of their own well-being.”

Tanoe said despite the stress level of her Walgreens job, it was hard to leave the store.

“I used to laugh and say they would bury me in the back of my store, because basically that was my home,” Tanoe said. “And I knew them. I knew my deaf patient. I knew my patient who had issues with her fingers, so I knew how to wrap the bag up so it was not too much for her. I knew the patient who didn’t want the receipt to be stapled to the bag. I knew the one who required twenty dollars cash back.”

But what Tanoe also said she knew was that ultimately, if the work pace continued, a terrible mistake might occur — one that could end up harming one of her beloved patients.

Tanoe now works as a hospital pharmacist, but continues to speak out against what she sees as the continuing deterioration of working conditions in large chain pharmacies. One thing she no longer has to fear: retaliation.

“Because of retaliation, very few people have been able to be the voices of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians,” she said. “It’s really sad to me that if you advocate for our profession you pay a price.”

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