what are some problems pharmacist face today?

Question

such as medication wise, not having eough people, or may be people stealing over the counter products.

Answer 1

A major issue is not getting paid in reasonable time for medicade/medicare. In IL, the average medicade payment time is 3-4 months.
The implementation of medication therapy management and other cognitive services. Pharmacy is good in charging for quanity; we need to learn how to charge for quality.
The never ending issue of the shortage and how to properly staff.
Most pharmacists and techs do not like drive through pharmacies.

Answer 2

People who are drug seeking are the biggest problem for pharmacists today. People who use every pharmacy they can to get multiple prescriptions or get them before they are due or even those who call them in illegally (fraud).

Another problem they face is the new Medicare Prescription Plan. It's made things so difficult for Medicare patients to get their medications and the pharmacists are having to take care of most of these issues.

Answer 3

biggest problem for retail pharmacists is by far PBMs (pharmacy benefit mangers, the insurance companies like medco, caremark, wellmark, PCS, etc.)

problem 1: their reimbursement is crap. on some medicare part D prescriptions, its not unusual for the pharmacy to get paid only $1 or 2 to over the cost of the drug to fill a prescription. thats not enough money pay staff, keep the lights on in the building, etc. plus, lots of times they dont pay you that $1 for several months. as youve probably heard on the news, many pharmacies are having to charge cash paying customers who dont have insurance $30-40 for pills that cost a buck or two to make up for the money they are losing from poor reimbursement from insurance companies

problem 2: mail order. they try to entice people to use mail order because those companies own the mail order pharmacies and get huge discounts or other perks from the drug companies to use their drugs as their prefered formulary (kickbacks are now illegal but they still pretty much get them since theyve figured out legal loopholes to get around the laws and are getting discounts and rebates in other ways). a lot of mail order companies give people 90 day prescriptions for the cost of 1 or 2 30 day copays to try to entice people to use the drugs they get really cheap. hasnt hit pharmacies that hard yet but mail order use is increasing rapidly and a lot of places might start going under if mail order growth continues like it has

theft and not enough prescription voluem for other reasons arent big problems for most pharmacies

Answer 4

I could give you a litany of problems...what are you after?

Let me say this though. We face more problems today, than 20 years ago when I began.