Patients flock to local pharmacies amidst looming CVS, Walgreens walk-outs

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - Pharmacists at Walgreens and CVS are threatening a nationwide walkout at the end of this month, pushing some customers to look locally for their pharmacological needs.

Pharmacists at Walgreens and CVS say their heavy workloads are putting their patients at risk. Those patients agree, saying they’re concerned about staff shortages and potential walkouts. So, they’re looking for alternatives.

Spalitto’s Pharmacy has been serving the Kansas City metro for nearly 100 years. Recently, they say, they’ve been seeing some new faces.

Sara Quin travels to Spallitto’s from out of town on a monthly basis to fill her prescriptions.

“I have had experiences with some other pharmacies where maybe things haven’t been counted correctly,” Quin explained. “Or you’re seeing new faces every day where they don’t know your history. Where here, I feel very secure when I walk through the door because I know what I’m getting is safe, I know what I’m getting is accurate.”

Quin said her 70-year-old mother is a technician for Walgreens and often feels like there are not enough people to support her workload.

“Maybe one other person, at the very most maybe two, but you have constant people coming in all day long or in the drive-thru and they demand what they want,” Quin said. “It’s really difficult to have a conversation with her and hear the stresses that she has, that she shouldn’t have in her 70s.”

As another protest looms, Anthony Spalitto, Manager of Spalitto’s Pharmacy, has noticed more customers coming their way.

“We’ve had upwards of 5-10 transfers a day and we’re happy to help,” Spalitto said. “We have the staff in place, and we could take on more volume.”

After eight years at CVS, Tony Spalitto was thrilled to take over as pharmacist for his family’s business where he feels more supported to focus on prescriptions.

“We’ve always got somebody here to help with patient pick up,” Tony explained. “I’ve always got somebody typing next to me to where if an interaction pops up on there they’ll mention it to me and I can give the go-ahead or I can say ‘no it needs to be talked about.’ So, I’m not sitting there typing it in, filling it, verifying it and putting it up.”

When new patients see enough staffing resources to take care of their needs, Spalitto’s has noticed they’re likely to come back.

Spalitto says patients are more likely to come back when they see that there are enough staff members to take care of their needs. Spalitto’s is more than willing to make that happen.

“It’s not a stressful environment, if that means paying a couple extra technicians so be it,” Anthony stated. “We see that that gives us the ability to give better service and we’ll recoup those costs in additional customers.”

CVS Corporate issued a statement today saying they’re not seeing any unusual activity that indicates closures are possible.

We’re committed to providing access to consistent, safe, high-quality health care to the patients and communities we serve and are working with our pharmacists to directly address any concerns they may have. We’re focused on developing a sustainable, scalable action plan to support both our pharmacists and our customers, that can be put in place in markets where support may be needed so we can continue delivering the high-quality care our patients depend on. Our leaders are actively engaged with our pharmacists to directly address concerns they’ve raised, and we’re providing ongoing updates on the progress made directly to our pharmacy teams. We’re engaging in a continuous two-way dialogue to share how we’re meeting the commitments we’ve made to our teams and to continue to hear their direct feedback.

Walgreens said it would not speculate about a walkout, but said it has been a challenging time.

We can’t speculate about the possibility of a walkout, but will share that the last few years have required an unprecedented effort from our team members, and we share their pride in this work — while recognizing it has been a very challenging time. We understand the immense pressures felt across the U.S. in retail pharmacy right now and are committed to ensuring that our entire pharmacy team has the support and resources necessary to continue to provide the best care to our patients while taking care of their own wellbeing.

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