Recently I was filling in a shift at a local retail pharmacy and was listening to a couple of technicians talk about Central Fill coming to their company.
As you can imagine, the first thought that came to their head was “Am I being replaced by a robot?”
Good question, but not likely. Although central fill and automation may offer some core efficiencies, there are a couple of considerations here…
First, most central fills focus on refills. Most pharmacists and technicians realize that “training” the customer to call in a day ahead of time may be a challenge. Unless the central fill is close to the receiving pharmacy, the patient would have to call a day ahead in order to trigger the use of the Central Fill.
The other consideration is this should free up time for the pharmacist to perform more MTM and counseling since they will spend less time checking product.
So the question is, “Will patients conform to calling in a day early to support Central Fill?”
The bigger question is “Will retailers keep the RPh hours to increase counseling, or decrease to reduce Labor costs?
Bill