“Walgreens is turning to robots to ease workloads at drugstores as it grapples with a nationwide shortage of pharmacists and pharmacist technicians,” reports The Wall Street Journal (Oct. 3, 2022). The nation’s second-largest pharmacy chain is setting up a network of automated, centralized drug-filling centers that could fill a city block. Rows of yellow robotic arms bend and rotate as they sort and bottle multicolored pills, sending them down conveyor belts. The setup cuts pharmacist workloads by at least 25% and will save Walgreens more than $1 billion a year.
The ultimate goal: give pharmacists more time to provide medical services such as vaccinations, patient outreach and prescribing of some medications. Those services are a relatively new and growing revenue stream for drugstores, which are increasingly able to bill insurers for some clinical services.
Covid-19 increased the demands on pharmacies as they expanded into testing and vaccinations, putting pressure on staff and creating a shortfall of pharmacists that many chains have struggled to fill. Walgreens has reduced pharmacy hours at a third of its nearly 9,000 U.S. stores, and in some markets is offering signing bonuses of $75,000 to fill pharmacist jobs.
Prescriptions that are time-sensitive or for controlled substances are still filled by pharmacists in stores. Those filled at the automated centers are delivered to stores alongside shipments of medications that are sorted and filled in stores.
For locations with healthier staffing levels, pharmacists are able to provide an array of medical services that bring in revenue and improve patient health, namely encouraging customers with chronic conditions to better comply with their medical regimens. The company aims to fill 40% to 50% of all prescriptions at centralized sites.
Classroom discussion questions:
- How else can robots be used to streamline OM functions in stores?
- Table 7.3, in your Heizer/Render/Munson chapter on Process Strategies, provides other examples of robotic use in the service sector. Discuss four examples.
