Amazon Is Taking Over The Pharmacy Industry
Retail giants should be scared.
Someone is finally disrupting the pharmacy industry and it shouldn’t be a huge surprise seeing Amazon’s action of late. If we have history to look at, the fate of Toys R Us and small chain bookstores should be a wake-up call to the drugstores.
There will always be a place for the corner pharmacy. Our kids get sick. We have ED visits. We have babies. We need post-op medications.
But for those chronic diseases, how much easier now to just have those medications delivered to you every month without hassle.
Mail-order is not new at all, but with the name of Amazon behind it, it suddenly seems a lot more reliable. That’s brand recognition right there.
Two years ago when Amazon bought Pillpack, there was a buzz in the pharmacy world about what they were planning. After a short time, I didn’t hear anything. Looking at the actions of the retail giants over that time frame, I don’t know if they were really anticipating the threat. While they busied themselves with other collaborations to increase profits, distracted by the declining reimbursements of insurance companies and other cost-cutting measures, I’m not sure they accurately evaluated the competition.
Maybe it will be fine, as mail order pharmacies have been around with Seniors accounting for a large percentage of the volume. Mail-order usage is usually dictated by a person’s insurance. Amazon Prime adoption rates are also lower among adults ages 55 and over. Mail-order pharmacies still can’t offer flu and other vaccines And when we look at the demographics and there are plenty out there right now.
What does this mean for Walgreens and CVS?
So the question really is, how are brick and mortar stores going to respond to the threat? If you look at the recent stock price dip, investors are scared too.
I really hope that this forces retail stores to start prioritizing their customer service again. This starts by treating their personnel well and giving pharmacists and technicians the proper tools to do their job. Now I can’t speak globally as every region and district operate a little differently, but I do know having to handle a hundred immunizations a day/hundreds of prescriptions/doctors call/counseling questions/insurance issues/ringing out customers all with only four tech hours is a big set up for medication errors and job dissatisfaction.
Employee retention measures and appreciation of good employees will go very far to not only decrease turnover but to also keep customers. Customers will always choose a place they love, a reliable process, and talking to good people over something like Amazon even if it means it’s less convenient.
With all of the KPI and other corporate driven, hard to achieve performance measures that have been pushed on pharmacists over the years, it has been frustrating to watch and hard to accurately really show a pharmacist’s worth. How much value can you put on catching a potentially damaging medication error? That and other interventions happen multiple times a day, but pharmacists don’t have that as one of their measures. Anyone in performance improvement will tell you, you get what you measure - and when we are losing a focus on the clinical value, it’s very frustrating for the pharmacists as they will not sacrifice patient care for an abstract performance measure like how long a prescription been sitting in the cue.
What can pharmacists do?
Unfortunately, the pharmacy job market has been a little crazy over the last few years anyway. I think the best thing to do is really evaluate if you love your job. Many people do. And if you do, then fight for it! There will always be a place for pharmacists at these drugstores, though the open spots may decrease.
If retail pharmacy isn’t your passion, now is a good time to educate yourself on what else is out there (there is a lot! I can help!). If you need help polishing up your resume, your interview or networking skills, now is the time to invest in your future.
Amazon won’t go away, but we do offer something that they don’t.
What should students think?
This is a perfect time to be a student! You have the world ahead of you and can make proactive rather than reactive decisions.
My advice to you would be to:
Continue to get exposure to different areas of pharmacy so that you can find a niche you truly love
You can always do mail-order pharmacy. It’s a little more monotonous, but a good, stable job
Hospital pharmacy! It’s not as boring as you think it is (that was my first thought on student rotations)
There are so many more ways to differentiate yourselves now! Look at social media and think of ways you can set yourself apart
Blaze a trail! Download my free ebook if you need to, but truly I think this is the direction we all need to take, whether it’s blazing a trail in our current role or finding a new one. You can use your pharmacy knowledge for so many things!