Walgreens’ ‘Power’ initiative expands, centralizing workload in Florida, Arizona

TEMPE, Ariz. Walgreens continues to expand its “Power” pharmacy workload initiative in Florida and Arizona in a campaign that eventually could extend throughout most or all of its operating regions across the United States.

Power is aimed at offloading and centralizing some prescription dispensing duties in Walgreens pharmacies. The goal: to ease up pharmacists’ workloads, reduce staffing costs and give its pharmacy professionals more time to consult with patients.

As of today, the project has shifted script dispensing functions for more than half the company’s nearly 800 stores in Florida and some 100 of its 238 stores in Arizona.

In Florida, such time-consuming duties as script and patient enrollment verification and insurance adjudication for hundreds of Walgreens pharmacies have been transferred to a central-fill processing center in the Orlando area. That “hub” processing center also fills some prescriptions for overnight delivery to “spoke” Walgreens stores that are already on the Power network in the state.

In Arizona, Walgreens is utilizing its existing mail-order pharmacy facility to centralize dispensing functions for stores already on the Power network.

“By the end of the calendar year, we’ll have full Power rollout in Arizona and Florida,” Walgreens spokesperson Tiffani Washington told Drug Store News. “We believe it could work in most markets.”

The project involves relocating some pharmacists from stores to the central processing centers, and Washington and other company officials acknowledge that Power involves some “change management,” and will lead to a modest reduction in the number of pharmacists actually working in the retail pharmacies as some dispensing duties shift to the central-fill facilities.

“Some pharmacists have chosen not to relocate to Orlando,” she said.

However, Walgreens managers say the effort will lead to a more cost-efficient dispensing operation and improve face-to-face counseling and clinical services for patients, by giving pharmacists in the stores more time for those activities.