The Redheaded Pharmacist

I’m Thinking About Flu Shot Season Already? Unfortunately Yes!

   Don’t ask me why but I’ve been thinking about an impending doom that will hit retail pharmacies sooner than I would like.  There is trouble brewing and it’s name is flu shot season!  Believe it or not although as I write this in the middle of the summer we are not that far removed from offering seasonal flu vaccinations at our pharmacies.   And that could spell trouble for pharmacy staffs everywhere.   

   So why is flu shot season a bad thing you ask?  In itself it isn’t.  In fact I consider season flu vaccines a valuable service that pharmacies all across the country provide for millions of patients on a yearly basis.  Just think how many people wouldn’t bother getting a flu shot if it wasn’t so convenient to go to your local pharmacy when you have some free time?   Imagine how much worse the flu epidemic would be without the widespread vaccination efforts by healthcare providers every year to minimize the flu’s impact on public health as well as work productivity. 

   So why is it if flu vaccinations are a good thing for everyone am I dreading it like retail merchants dread Black Friday?   It is all about how my employer decides that flu shots are handled that has me worried sick.   Lets just say that we have been suffering through hours cuts like many pharmacies around the country have also dealt with over the last several months and years.   Combine a bad economy, competition from multiple competitors, and a new threat of losing business to mail order pharmacies and many pharmacy locations are having to deal with decreased volume.  This results in the inevitable hours cuts by management.   Which is why I am worried about the role out of the seasonal flu vaccines. 

    Our employer will order and receive shipments earlier than you would expect the flu shot to arrive.   This means that we don’t have that much more time to deal with any preparations for the increased business that results from first offering seasonal flu vaccines.  And trying to deal with the additional walk in customers that want to get a shot on top of the regular prescription business can put a strain on even the best pharmacy staffs.  

   You see, my wonderful employer thinks that the best way to distribute seasonal flu shots is to simply allow for walk in customers to get a shot without an appointment.  That doesn’t sound that bad until you realize that we will get no additional help for all of this work that will suddenly flood through our front door.  And the people that actually think this way of handling flu vaccines don’t actually have to give any themselves.   I just don’t understand why there can’t be some kind of clinic day system set up to deliver hundreds of flu shots in one afternoon to patients utilizing support staff to ensure that everything runs quickly and smoothly for each and every customer?  That doesn’t sound that hard to me. 

   Here is why I hate walk in customers for flu shots that don’t have a previous appointment.   That kind of additional business is unpredictable.  You could get five people at 5PM on a Monday that suddenly decide that it is a good idea to get a flu shot when you already have multiple people waiting for prescriptions.  Time becomes a problem when the staff pharmacists are constantly interrupted from their regular duties to step aside into a private area to give a seasonal flu vaccine to a patient.  It takes time and work will just continue to pile up for that pharmacist while this vaccination duty is happening.   Wait times inevitably go up and customers become restless. 

   And it is bad business in my opinion to do shots this way and I can explain why.   What happens every flu shot season is that you have several customers that come in for their season flu shot that don’t normally shop at the pharmacy.  They are otherwise healthy individuals that only need to get their flu shot once a year.  That means they are additional customers from the “little old lady” types that come into the store so often even the part time technicians that are at school most of the year still know who these customers are when they walk in the door.  When you allow these customers to simply walk in without an appointment for a flu shot they suddenly bump regular pharmacy customers that come in behind them that do hundredsof dollars worth of business each month to the back of the line.   You make people that literally helped build the pharmacy with all of their repeat business wait behind customers that you won’t see again for 12 months.  Having an appointment for flu shot customers means they could get that shot in a timely manner in a part of the work day where the pharmacy staff could be prepared for them.  It would also mean that the nice little old lady that fills 12 prescriptions a month won’t have to wait longer for their medications because you already know when to be prepared for the flu shot customers because you have a schedule ahead of time. 

   To me it seems like bad business to allow a walk in customer that just wants a flu shot to force people that are actually sick and need prescriptions in a timely manner to wait longer for their prescriptions so a pharmacist can stop what they are doing and give a flu shot to a customer they won’t see again for another year.   The flu shot takes several days before it is totally effective so it isn’t as urgent a need as some of the other pharmacy customers you see on a day to day basis.  Just like Rite Aid’s idiotic “15 Minute Guarantee” that meant that those new customer’s prescriptions were bumped ahead of existing customers just to meet that impending deadline is a bad idea so is this.  I’m not saying some customers are more important than others but making your best customers wait longer because people you see once a year for one item want to ge that now isn’t good customer service in my book.   Especially when there are effective ways of dealing with the additional workload of flu shot customers so everyone can be helped in a more timely manner. 

   I just wish the powers that be within the corporate structure of my employer would realize the strain it puts on pharmacy employees to have walk in flu shot requests without an appointment.  Other pharmacies handle it differently.  You can hire an outside nursing staff to come in and set up a flu shot clinic on certain days.  You can also have appointments at certain times of the day when you know you are better staffed to handle the additional duties of giving a flu shot to a patient.   My employer could even utilize employees like myself that are floater pharmacists to come in as additional support staff to be used for anyone that wants to get a flu vaccine.   It would run smoothly and both the employees and the customers would be more satisfied with the overall experience.   Remember that making it fast and easy and convenient for patients makes it more likely for them to come get their shot in the first place! 

   So I know I am jumping the gun a little by thinking about this topic so soon in the year but like that car accident you can see coming long before the collision occurs I can see the disaster that is flu shot season coming a mile away.  I just hope that the people with the real power at my employer realizes that walk-in no appointment flu shot administration is not the best way to handle such an important function of retail pharmacies.  I’m not optimistic though and I have to just accept the fact that I can only do what I can do and if people have to wait longer then they want to that is the way it is going to be.   But it bothers me that there are easier ways to handle certain issues like administering flu shots and my employer chooses to ignore them.   In the end I think it all comes down to money but I tend to have a more cynical viewpoint than some other people.  How are flu shots handled at your pharmacy?   Do you dread the impending doom of flu shot season like I do or does your pharmacy have a system in place to make the whole process run smoothly?   I’d like to hear your input. 

The Redheaded Pharmacist