Hy-Vee: Key Structural Changes In The Pharmacy Department

Over the past six years, I have witnessed Hy-Vee undergo key structural changes, mainly in the pharmacy department. The reorganization process has helped the pharmacies produce more efficient numbers and profits. Structural changes such as a new computer system and a central fill processing facility has improved the work flow. This allows the pharmacist to have more time to help our patients, which is ultimately what our goal is. There were definitely some doubts about whether restructuring would be successful. In order to really comprehend how big of an impact central fill was going to have on our pharmacies, we first need to look at the structure of the Hy-Vee pharmacy and the different components that make it up. The pharmacy is commonly

Every employee should be comfortable working at each station besides verification which only the pharmacist can do. The pharmacy often has busy spurts or days where we become short on staff so we often jump around from station to station. Compared to competitors, Hy-Vee is efficient with staffing their pharmacy. Generally there are four employees (a pharmacist, two techs/interns, and a clerk) working. There are pharmacies where they staff only three or even two people and it creates opportunities for errors to occur when they get busy. This is due to being short staffed but still trying to fill the same amount of scripts. A “skeleton schedule” is the term that corporate offices use when they restrict the number of hours that the pharmacy can use to

It is obvious that CVS only cares about how many scripts they can generate with the least amount of staff possible. The customer service that CVS provides is much different from Hy-Vee. Although Hy-Vee is still concerned with how many scripts they fill, their number one priority is customer service. Hy-Vee constantly stresses that we need to treat our patients like family. That means taking time out of our busy day to counsel each patient on their medications instead of just ringing them out. Some low-income patients are able to set up monthly payment plans to pay for their scripts when money is an issue. If a patient is out of a medication and has no more refills, we give them a few pills to get by while we wait on the doctor’s office. We have a free-of-charge delivery service where our delivery driver will deliver prescriptions to elderly people who have no means of transportation. It is providing legendary customer service that really sets Hy-Vee pharmacies apart from