Smooth Transitions

A lot has happened in the past few weeks, which is part of the reason I haven’t been able to post. Let me start off with a topic I started out my last post about – the CVS-Walgreens dispute.  After Walgreens announced that they would no longer be accepting the reimbursement rates CVS/Caremark provided as a PBM and would eventually phase themselves out of the network, CVS/Caremark delivered a devastating blow back when it announced that it was not goling to wait for Walgreens to phase themselves out, instead they were going to eliminate Walgreens from their network effective in 30 days. You can read more about that by clicking here. This was a pretty low blow, as it proved that CVS Caremark really does not care at all about their patients. While Walgreens was trying to gradually cut ties because of unfair business and reimbursement rates they were receiving, we still realized that many Walgreens customers use Carmark as their provider so we mapped out a 3 year plan to make the transition easier on patients. CVS/Caremark proved that the patients do not matter at all, they were just going to cause mass chaos and let patients have to fend for themselves in finding a new network approved pharmacy. The issue does not end there though, because earlier this week, we (Walgreens) apparently came to some new terms with CVS/Caremark that basically nullifies this entire debacle. Walgreens will once again accept Caremark as a PBM and CVS/Caremark will once again welcome Walgreens into their network. More on that resolution is here. So how does this all fit into my job at corporate? Well, it definitely changed the atmosphere of the corporate environment during these contract negotiations, but thankfully, the two kiss and made up, so things have returned to normal.

When I last left you, I was working in Pharmacy Affairs. My last week with the department proved to be surprisingly busy when I signed on to help assist with a specific project involving auxillary label translations for the upcoming New York City translation project. I cannot really go into the specifics of what I was doing, but I spent two long days in front of a computer and worked through pages of excel data to help ensure that the project would go forward. While the legwork itself felt monotonous, I take away knowing that I had a crucial hand in hopefully making this project a success.

I am nearing the end of my second week in retail clinical services, and have been pretty busy with a lot of the new health iniatives the company is working on. This is the tricky part, because basically everything I am working on that is interesting is pretty confidential, so basically I can dangle a carrot in front of you and tell you how awesome it tastes but not ever let you catch the carrot to taste for yourself. Other projects I can tell you about however is that I am working with one of the women who writes all the continuing education (CE) credits for the company, so I have been actively involved in peer reviewing in my spare time and later I will be writing some test questions for CE credits. I am also working with the Medication Therapy Management (MTM) manager and learning about the future reimbursement issues associated with pharmacists providing MTM cognitive services and how insurance companies reimburse the company for these services through the various MTM platforms used. At the end of this rotation, I have to create and present a 30 minute community outreach power point presentation on a disease state or relevant topic that we can then use on the store level to help in patient education.

Last week was Pharmacy Supervisor training. A pharmacy supervisor is basically a specialized district manager who oversees all the Walgreen stores (specifically the pharmacy) in a given district – usually consisting of 20-40 stores or more or less depending on the region. Whenever Walgreens promotes new pharmacists to supervisor, they have a mandatory two week training session at corporate to better learn how to handle their new responsibilities. Last week was week one of training, and week two of training is later in August. I got to meet and network with four new supervisors from the Seattle, Ft Lauderdale, New York City, and Houston areas who are in charge of hiring new pharmacists. You can think of the first week of training very much like a college orientation – but longer – five full days of info session after group activity after info session. The sessions were anywhere from one to four hours long and had different aspects of corporate (retail clinical services, finance, employee relations, etc) come in with presentations for the supervisors to better learn their new role in management. The interns were invited to sit in on any session throughout the week, so I ended up attending about 3/4 of the sessions. One of the most interesting sessions was a four hour financial session (no joke – it really was) where all the accounting and operational statements were reviewed and I learned a lot about analyzing company financial statements. Networking with the supervisors was definitely a plus, because they know how selective Walgreens is when picking their corporate interns, and getting face time with four supervisors for an entire week and building those professional relationships can definitely be a great benefit in the long run when applying for jobs in those metropolitan areas or in the company in general.

The four interns were able to break away from supervisor training last Tuesday to check out the Chicago Board Review for the graduates taking the pharmacy boards. Walgreens offers board reviews in various locations, and Chicago is one of their largest reviews. Some professors in therapeutics and pharmacy law who work for Kaplan come to teach it, so about 200 some graduates were in attendance who signed on with Walgreens. While there, we got to meet some of the past corporate interns and one of them is doing a residency with Northwestern Hospital’s Walgreens on-site so the corporate interns were invited to spend the day with her later in July.

We also had a meeting set up this week where the Executive Vice President of Pharmacy came to speak to the interns and tell us a little about his career path and how he came to rule the entire pharmacy division of Walgreens. He shared a lot of personal experience and provided great insight into future career options for us. The future of pharmacy jobs is a little unsettling. While the profession is advancing, the job prospects it seems are not when you consider the growing number of pharmacy schools that are being built and the abundance of graduates entering the field each year from many schools that are trying to capitalize on how profitable pharmacy schools are. When you combine this with the damaged economy and the fact that most pharmacy companies and chains are no longer opening up as many pharmacies as they were in the past – it’s pretty terrifying to think about for many recent pharmacy grads. The positive side of this is that companies no longer just hire anyone as pharmacists. Walgreens is now very selective when it hires and will not take the “2.0 and Go” candidate who has zero skills when talking to patients anymore since they now have a very large applicant pool to choose from – something that may help when advancing the profession. The downside is the days of pharmacist defecit where companies offer you a $50,000 sign on bonus and/or a brand new car are completely gone. Aside from this meeting, the company also organized a meeting with the pharmacists in charge of independent buyouts to tell us a little more about the process and how they select established pharmacies to purchase.

My girlfriend, Trisha, is flying into Chicago tonight so we have a great weekend planned in the city. We’ll be staying downtown in center city and on Friday we are going to see Billy Elliot The Musical, followed by a Second City Chicago late night comedy show on Saturday. The Taste of Chicago, a massive food festival, starts this weekend too and continues through July 4th when my parents come to visit, so we’ll definitely be checking that out as well. I also just started a class at Northwestern University in latin american politics and so far it has been very interesting and an overall positive experience. I’ll break away from the typical internship post next time and talk more about what this exciting weekend brought. Until next time!

Recommendations of the Day:
Fiction – You Can’t Go Home Again, Thomas Wolfe (currently reading)
Album - Hospice, The Antlers
Song – Home, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
Movie – Get Him To The Greek

Business As Usual

I arrived at the office on monday morning to a company wide announcement from our CEO, Greg Wasson. Apparently, Walgreens has decided to end its business relationship with rival company CVS/Caremark and no longer accept any new or newly renewed plans associated with the PBM (Prescription Benefit Manager). You can read the press release here. This essentially affects most CVS and Caremark employees who are covered under work benefits, but also affects any private prescription drug plan who uses CVS/Caremark as their benefit manager (which I just happen to have since my mother is an employee of Caremark). Short term, nothing will change, as all current contracts that are affected will continue to be accepted until the contract with the benefit manager is renewed, which usually occurs in three year cycles. Long term, once contracts are renewed behind the scenes with these plans by both the insured parties and the employers providing these services, Walgreens will no longer be able to bill these insurances if the company remains behind this decision, which it probably will. All the divisions in my department (Pharmacy Affairs, Third Party, and Quality Assurance) had a meeting with our director on Monday morning to discuss the implications of this decision and how we should handle customer relations with those who are not currently affected but may be in the future.

Today was also an interesting day because the four interns were taken to lunch by the Vice President of Pharmacy Operations. There really was not much of a purpose behind the lunch, just an introductory and a get to know each other occasion. We went to a really nice restaurant called J Alexanders located not far from our corporate campus, which served single portion sizes that could probably feed five. All the corporate interns (not just pharmacy) will also be entering a competition starting next week where we will be broken into teams and be assigned case studies and projects. The winning team also gets a lunch or dinner with the CEO, so here’s hoping for a win on that front!

After lunch, I was invited by my mentor to attend an ideation meeting. I had met with the same group, made up of various project managers and department managers, for other meetings, but this was the first informal setting where each manager or department representative would share new ideas to help make our pharmacy computer systems better or fixes to comply with new legislature. Walgreens usually releases a few new upgrades every year for their system, so this group also decides which updates are put into each release since limited resources exist and not every project can be incorporated. It’s really impressive seeing board meetings like this take place, as most of the people in the room are by far some of the smartest and most innovative people working for the company.

To have a little fun, last night I hopped a train downtown to see She & Him play a free concert in Millennium park (think Central Park but Chicago). She & Him are made up of Zooey Deschanel and M Ward. Both are amazingly talented, and you may recognize Zooey who played Summer in the movie (500) Days of Summer (See it if you haven’t – I highly recommend it). Every Monday there is a free concert in the park featuring independent musicians, so next week I plan on seeing Great Lake Swimmers perform (and once again, it’s completely free!). Below, I finally took some photos to incorporate and share with you guys of both the concert and downtown scene. The rest of this week I’ll be finishing up my work in Pharmacy Affairs, spending Thursday with some state managers who focus on legislation, and then transitioning into Retail Clinical Services. I’ll update you guys with how that transition goes early next week.

Living the Corporate Dream

Week three has just ended at my internship, so I thought it was appropriate to finally fill you in on just what I have been doing. I am working in Pharmacy Affairs, which is under a huge umbrella at corporate called Pharmacy Services. What Pharmacy Affairs specifically handles is the ever changing regulation and legislation impacting all the pharmacies in the chain by state, and working to make sure that the company stays in compliance with new state laws as they are introduced. I’m kind of disappointed that I only have one week left in this department, because I absolutely love it.

The biggest problem over the past few weeks has been with New York City. Recently, the city passed an ordinance requiring that all chain pharmacies (defined as ownership of four or more pharmacies in the city) be required to provide specific language assistance to customers who enter the pharmacy and do not speak English. Walgreens owns about 80 pharmacies in the city (and another 300 Duane Reade stores), so this problem is currently at the forefront as the window to comply with this ordinance is closing. The specific requirements of the bill states that free written translation of medication labels, warning labels, and other written material vital to the consumer’s use of prescription medication be offered to be translated to the seven most common languages that limited English proficient New Yorkers speak. These languages are spanish, two forms of chinese, russian, korean, italian, french creole, and polish. In addition to written translations of these languages, the pharmacies must also offer oral translation services that encompass close to 150 languages. If you are interested in learning more about this bill, you can read the press release from the city council on the issue here. Over my first three weeks, I had the opportunity to sit in on a lot of the meetings where we saw proposals and see developments on the written services and the various technical requirements that this means.

Aside from this issue, I have also been working at reading and analyzing each states pharmacy statutes and regulations to make sure we are in compliance with pharmacy technician training and registration and also with pharmacy interns administering flu vaccines. Pharmacists now have the ability to immunize in every state, and in approximately half of those, pharmacy interns who have undergone state approved training can also administer immunizations under the supervision of a pharmacist. Unfortunately, Pennsylvania does not allow interns to immunize, but many other states do and I have been compiling an up to date list of which states allow it while citing the specific statute or regulation.

When not with my mentor Al who is the manager of the department, I have been working a lot with the Prescription Drug Monitoring (PDM) Project Manager, Tomson. Currently, 34 states require that all controlled substances be reported to the state when dispensed. Some states require this monthly, some states want it weekly, and some states actually want this daily. Tomson’s job is to make sure we are getting this file to each of the states in a timely matter. When you think about it, one person doing this for all 7,000+ stores in the company is kind of intimidating. The purpose of this is to limit abuse of controlled medications. When a prescription is entered for a controlled substance, the prescriber chosen in the system must have a valid DEA number. At the end of the day, each store generates a list of all the controlled substances they dispensed for the day (with the name of the patient, medication, prescriber, DEA, etc) and the file is then incorporated into a larger file at the state level. A whole bunch of IT people then customize this file to each state’s standards and it gets recorded.

Last week, all four pharmacy interns were given the chance to see some of the on-site pharmacies located in downtown Chicago. On-site pharmacies are nontraditional pharmacies located in clinics, physician groups, or other specialties (e.g. Northwestern Hospital has a specialty pharmacy dealing with transplant drugs since they are one of the best transplant hospitals in the country). Friday’s visits were to specialty pharmacies serving the HIV/AIDS population. The first pharmacy we went to was located in the Howard Brown clinic, a clinic primarily serving gay and lesbian populations. The pharmacist in charge there was an expert when it came to HIV medications, and was widely known throughout the community as the person to go to on this issue by not only patients, but doctors as well. The second clinic we visited was part of a group called North Star, another group specializing in gay and lesbian populations with HIV. The pharmacy in this building was on the fifth floor and actually had no outside signs to even indicate there was a Walgreens inside. Instead, the pharmacy manager, another expert on HIV medications, would do a lot of community outreach to advertise for the pharmacy and let physicians and patients know they existed and what they were able to offer. The manager was also an expert in oncology medications, so the practice was broadened and the pharmacist actually managed a lot of cancer medications as well. The visits were very educational, as I had never realized the value of specialty pharmacies with clinical experts before. Since we visited with some of the corporate bosses, they gave us some insight into what they look for when they hire these specialists and how they make their decisions.

Besides the four pharmacy interns working at corporate, there are about 40 other interns who are working throughout corporate in either finance, e-commerce, supply chain, shipping and receiving, merchandising, and industrial engineering. This past Tuesday, Walgreens arranged a banquet dinner at a local restaurant for the interns and our mentors where all the interns were able to meet. Bowling and bocce ball followed. We have some built in events for all the corporate interns throughout the summer, so Friday we all attended a networking session where we had to work on “elevator” speeches and deliver them in front of the entire room. An elevator speech is basically a quick introduction about yourself and your job that is designed to help network more efficiently. Later this summer, Walgreens is taking all the interns to a Chicago Cubs baseball game, in addition to some field trips up to Wisconsin to see one of the distribution centers and innovation centers.

I’ve been keeping busy with the other interns on the weekend. This past Friday the four of us took the Metra downtown to Wrigleyville (the location of the Cubs stadium) to watch the Flyers-Blackhawks game and enjoy the nightlife. The ride on the Metra was unbelievable. The Metra is the only public transportation in Chicago where it is legal to have alcohol, so the happy hour train is filled with professionals getting off of work lugging coolers of beer and liquor on the train. The other interns and I brought some beers, and ended up sitting across from a group who work at Abott (a pharmaceutical company) that brought on a giant cooler of a nice summer concoction they were passing out on the train. The guys from Abott called it “Fancy Friday” and this was all part of their weekly routine. Its nice that an otherwise boring train ride can be livened up to the point where you almost don’t care about your destination.

So far I have been having a blast. Tomorrow I am going to a free concert in Millennium Park to see She & Him, so it should be a good time. This internship has been extremely satisfying so far, and I cannot stress enough how awesome it is and how thankful I am to have been chosen. The people I am meeting and the experiences that I am having will surely impact me in the long run. I promise next post I’ll try to liven it up by incorporating some pictures, but until then, adios!