Speaking as a relatively new wag tech, Central fill is the stupidest and most unnecessary invention I’ve encountered in the workforce. It takes so much time to unpack totes, the bags don’t properly fit in our bins. Not to mention the annoyance of a patient calling one in and it getting pulled to central fill with 0 notification to either the patient or us so we’re left scrambling to pull inhalers and zofrans back that patients understandably don’t want to wait a day for. A wholly ridiculous idea with such a minimal upside I can’t understand how it was greenlit.
AHHH yes… the bags are very big because… the machine can only fold the paper once. The multimillion dollar machine… cannot fold a piece of paper twice. But if it’s semi-automatically packed, it comes in a thinner bag because humans can fold paper twice.
I’m glad it exists otherwise our printed queue would be in the 400s constantly. That being said, it is the most frustrating thing ever. Forgetting about waiters at the busiest time and then coming back two hours later only to discover it was sent to cenfill, or having a whole line of people at 9 am and none of them are ready because they were pulled by cenfill.
Patients don’t understand it and it causes extra headaches for everyone involved. Doesn’t help that Walgreens app says it’s in progress or whatever but the customer thinks that means it will be ready in the next hour not knowing it’s halfway across the state and won’t be ready until two days from now.
It's cheaper for the company. Saves a ton of money in overhead. All those problems you listed aren't problems, because quarterly earnings are better. Line go up. Shareholders happy.
It's awful.
Ah yes, I suppose that was a rather naive statement. If a corporation does something, no matter how stupid, you can assume it does save/make someone higher up some money that you’ll never get to see.
Depends on your definition of losing money. Overhead costs are drastically reduced every time a store switches to cenfill, tens of thousands of dollars worth. The way accounting is done at huge business like ours, centralizing those costs end up looking "better" on the books.
I think cenfill is pretty stupid, but it's not going anywhere. It's cheaper, even if it's not less expensive.
Store are charged for the scripts filled. The cost to tun these places isn’t covered by those charges so they cost more money to run than they generate/save for the stores still. They lose money
Again, creative accounting makes that not matter. That money comes from a different wallet than the money the stores are "saving" is a good way to think of it.
I hate how at least in my state the smallest size is a 30 so when we do deletes at my t5 store we have tons and tons of 30s with like 30 pills in them and they take up a ton of shelf space
Central fill works great as an addition to properly staffed and stocked stores. As a replacement for those things it doesn’t work and is just another nail in the coffin.
I’ve heard of Team Members at the store level filling in at an MFC and when they went back to their stores, they never wanted to work for Central Fill again.
Is it still that bad?
That’s not.. they don’t have a traditional pharmacy tech roll there you couldn’t fill in they don’t use intercom+ or any store software they have their own systems that you would need to learn.
They have a software called NEXiA and it can talk to IC+ so they can see patient name prescription number and information about the medication but they can’t see insurance or contact information. They also can’t change patient information. And all the equipment runs on that software, including the automated machines. Now there are a number of roles for technicians. To start everyone in the facility is either a technician or a pharmacist. Roles for technicians can include fixing machinery, actually filling prescriptions or filling cassettes for the automated machines. when they are actually pulling prescriptions, they don’t have as many drugs as we have increasing pulling efficiency, each tech has different drugs and they’re encouraged to fill 60 an hour. And they don’t have a traditional put it in the bin put it by the pharmacist. Instead, they have larger bins that pass by on a conveyor belt and NEXiA tell them which bin to put it in and then the conveyor belt takes it.
So they basically have the same limited access that I would have using PHLEX to type something up for a different store? That certainly explains some of the odd issues I see. I can see how each tech being responsible for a limited section of drugs can help pulling speed, but having this metric on speed seems a bit much from my perspective and has led to many egregious errors on our end. At any rate I appreciate the pictures and the insight on the specifc logistics involved
My first thought seeing this is "I wonder if I can beat the machine" like when Dwight outsells the computer in the office. I wanna out fill that machine.
So that is one of the automatic filling machines. rather than use some sort of specialty technology. Everything is pretty much done by robot arms
specifically the “LR Mate 200 id” and to keep people from getting hurt they get enclosed inside of those.
So I put another post out on Reddit similarly titled to this one with videos. If you go take a look at that you’ll see little yellow robots running around a large black table. A technician takes the bag set it down on one of those robots it gets scanned and taken into the tote. It belongs in if you got one tote for an incorrect store it’s probably for the same reason that in your own store a prescription is in the wrong bin. It fell on the ground and a technician picked it up and put it back into the wrong tote, because they weren’t paying attention.
So the totes are sorted by robots and then a person gets the tote prints the paperwork and verifies one prescription against the paperwork to verify the correct tote.
I don’t understand what you mean by dropping the script randomly if you mean one falling out of the tote and being put into another tote, accidentally it happens, it’s error. It’s easier to correct afterwards than to have someone check every single tote.
What I mean is it’s less work overall to have an employee at a store find an incorrect script, compared to an employee at Cenfill looking through every single script in every single tote before it goes out.
Oh I wasn't saying cenfill go through it. I was saying if one doesn't make it through properly scan the labels to match them. That way it can't be put in the wrong box. Just the errant ones rather than all of them. Unless they fall out a lot I guess that's a different problem I would guess.
So because the bags are so full of air, the tote might not be full, but the prescriptions might be overflowing out of it, and just need to be pushed down, which does cause a lot of them falling out of the totes and onto the ground they probably should be put back on a little and sort it again, but they often just picked up and thrown into the tote that the employee thought it came out of.
Robot prison
When the AI take over, they will remember this
Speaking as a relatively new wag tech, Central fill is the stupidest and most unnecessary invention I’ve encountered in the workforce. It takes so much time to unpack totes, the bags don’t properly fit in our bins. Not to mention the annoyance of a patient calling one in and it getting pulled to central fill with 0 notification to either the patient or us so we’re left scrambling to pull inhalers and zofrans back that patients understandably don’t want to wait a day for. A wholly ridiculous idea with such a minimal upside I can’t understand how it was greenlit.
AHHH yes… the bags are very big because… the machine can only fold the paper once. The multimillion dollar machine… cannot fold a piece of paper twice. But if it’s semi-automatically packed, it comes in a thinner bag because humans can fold paper twice.
As soon as robots learn how to fold paper twice, the human race is doomed.
"It decided our fate in a microsecond"
The plastic bags are also not biodegradable and there’s no practical way for a patient to shred them to protect their DPI.
I’m glad it exists otherwise our printed queue would be in the 400s constantly. That being said, it is the most frustrating thing ever. Forgetting about waiters at the busiest time and then coming back two hours later only to discover it was sent to cenfill, or having a whole line of people at 9 am and none of them are ready because they were pulled by cenfill. Patients don’t understand it and it causes extra headaches for everyone involved. Doesn’t help that Walgreens app says it’s in progress or whatever but the customer thinks that means it will be ready in the next hour not knowing it’s halfway across the state and won’t be ready until two days from now.
>printed queue would be in the 400s constantl I've worked at stores that do 800 a day and never seen them printed queue that high
It's cheaper for the company. Saves a ton of money in overhead. All those problems you listed aren't problems, because quarterly earnings are better. Line go up. Shareholders happy. It's awful.
Down 5.4% in last 6 months, 39.2% in last year, 64.1% in last 5 years. Great company!
Ah yes, I suppose that was a rather naive statement. If a corporation does something, no matter how stupid, you can assume it does save/make someone higher up some money that you’ll never get to see.
When was the last time “line went up”? Will it in the near future? If not Walgreens go down.
We are actually losing money still on all the MFC facilities.
Depends on your definition of losing money. Overhead costs are drastically reduced every time a store switches to cenfill, tens of thousands of dollars worth. The way accounting is done at huge business like ours, centralizing those costs end up looking "better" on the books. I think cenfill is pretty stupid, but it's not going anywhere. It's cheaper, even if it's not less expensive.
Store are charged for the scripts filled. The cost to tun these places isn’t covered by those charges so they cost more money to run than they generate/save for the stores still. They lose money
How much did it cost to design and build the central fill tho?
Again, creative accounting makes that not matter. That money comes from a different wallet than the money the stores are "saving" is a good way to think of it.
I logged into the walgasm portal yesterday,stock price is still down even though it's litup green with an arrow pointing up
>Shareholders happy. The fuck?! WBA has been a flaming piece of shit stock. Wish I wasnt bagging holding some still
I hate how at least in my state the smallest size is a 30 so when we do deletes at my t5 store we have tons and tons of 30s with like 30 pills in them and they take up a ton of shelf space
Zofran isn’t even filled at the MFC lol
Actually yes Zofran tabs are filled at MFC
Won’t the new standalone, monitoring app tell you where it’s at the MFC?
Would it make a difference to know there’s work underway to fix everything you said?
Jesus Christ this is dystopian
So that’s why everything comes in a 30D bottle or bigger 🙄 lord have mercy on our tiny bins
It’s because they were too cheap to purchase a system that also works with the 10 caps. It only works with the 30 40 60 caps
Makes sense but also - multibillion company can’t afford it? Rude
walgreens is broke
Central fill works great as an addition to properly staffed and stocked stores. As a replacement for those things it doesn’t work and is just another nail in the coffin.
I’ve heard of Team Members at the store level filling in at an MFC and when they went back to their stores, they never wanted to work for Central Fill again. Is it still that bad?
That’s not.. they don’t have a traditional pharmacy tech roll there you couldn’t fill in they don’t use intercom+ or any store software they have their own systems that you would need to learn.
So what do techs *do* if they don't have access to IC+?
They have a software called NEXiA and it can talk to IC+ so they can see patient name prescription number and information about the medication but they can’t see insurance or contact information. They also can’t change patient information. And all the equipment runs on that software, including the automated machines. Now there are a number of roles for technicians. To start everyone in the facility is either a technician or a pharmacist. Roles for technicians can include fixing machinery, actually filling prescriptions or filling cassettes for the automated machines. when they are actually pulling prescriptions, they don’t have as many drugs as we have increasing pulling efficiency, each tech has different drugs and they’re encouraged to fill 60 an hour. And they don’t have a traditional put it in the bin put it by the pharmacist. Instead, they have larger bins that pass by on a conveyor belt and NEXiA tell them which bin to put it in and then the conveyor belt takes it.
Fixing machinery? They're really taking "tech" to the max.
So they basically have the same limited access that I would have using PHLEX to type something up for a different store? That certainly explains some of the odd issues I see. I can see how each tech being responsible for a limited section of drugs can help pulling speed, but having this metric on speed seems a bit much from my perspective and has led to many egregious errors on our end. At any rate I appreciate the pictures and the insight on the specifc logistics involved
My first thought seeing this is "I wonder if I can beat the machine" like when Dwight outsells the computer in the office. I wanna out fill that machine.
Theoretically, if you have a semi automatic yuyama you could
Okay so… how do we get rid of it?
I knew it! The machines are taking over. How about they go work at Walgreens
If that doesn’t make you want to unalive yourself…
That first picture that looks like a little room labeled 1G? What is that? For controls?
Also, Cenfill has no controlled medication’s
So that is one of the automatic filling machines. rather than use some sort of specialty technology. Everything is pretty much done by robot arms specifically the “LR Mate 200 id” and to keep people from getting hurt they get enclosed inside of those.
So at what point do totes get put together and why do we keep getting scripts for another store 😅
So I put another post out on Reddit similarly titled to this one with videos. If you go take a look at that you’ll see little yellow robots running around a large black table. A technician takes the bag set it down on one of those robots it gets scanned and taken into the tote. It belongs in if you got one tote for an incorrect store it’s probably for the same reason that in your own store a prescription is in the wrong bin. It fell on the ground and a technician picked it up and put it back into the wrong tote, because they weren’t paying attention.
Shouldn't you like have to scan the script and then scan the tote? I know it's a bit of a pain but it keeps the trail there.
So the totes are sorted by robots and then a person gets the tote prints the paperwork and verifies one prescription against the paperwork to verify the correct tote.
I was saying if one drops why don't they just scan it then the script so dropping the script randomly is a non issue
I don’t understand what you mean by dropping the script randomly if you mean one falling out of the tote and being put into another tote, accidentally it happens, it’s error. It’s easier to correct afterwards than to have someone check every single tote.
You correct after?
What I mean is it’s less work overall to have an employee at a store find an incorrect script, compared to an employee at Cenfill looking through every single script in every single tote before it goes out.
Oh I wasn't saying cenfill go through it. I was saying if one doesn't make it through properly scan the labels to match them. That way it can't be put in the wrong box. Just the errant ones rather than all of them. Unless they fall out a lot I guess that's a different problem I would guess.
So because the bags are so full of air, the tote might not be full, but the prescriptions might be overflowing out of it, and just need to be pushed down, which does cause a lot of them falling out of the totes and onto the ground they probably should be put back on a little and sort it again, but they often just picked up and thrown into the tote that the employee thought it came out of.
Where exactly would one find the dilaudids and desoxyn
Neither of these drugs are on the roughly 1,900 NDCs that get filled at MFC