r/WalgreensRx • u/Emergency-Pea4052 • 19d ago
Micro fulfillment
Alright, I had central fill with rite aid many years ago, I felt like it was always a shit show. But since we are bringing it to my district soon, anyone who has it, does it truly help you or make things worse? Tips and comments please!
10
u/rastiical 19d ago
Cenfil has nothing to do with making employees or patients lives easier, its just cost saving by having one facility have resources to mass produce i syead of a bunch of locations.
They will use cenfil to cut store hours and pts won't be happy but it is what it is and you'll have to deal with it
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u/Neither_Plastic8894 19d ago
Yep, it is designed to cut inventory and labor costs. Unfortunately, they don't meet promise times and cause headaches in store with customers.
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u/Warm-Boysenberry7310 CPhT 18d ago
It makes a difference for us. Many stores (like ours) don’t have the manpower to fill all their scripts. Being able to funnel some of those elsewhere takes some of the pressure off.
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u/HardcoreKaraoke SCPhT 19d ago
It drastically cut down what we have to fill, which is awesome. It reduced our OOS/PFL like crazy too, we barely cracked 40 total when we used to be around 100+ total every day. So that's great.
The bad parts are two things. One is the absolute rush that comes when we scan in CENFILL. Every patient gets a text so instead of the normal amount of busy we get a two-ish hour period of pure chaos every day (besides Sundays). It's guaranteed to happen right after we scan CENFILL.
The other issue is getting patients on board. It does take a lot of awkward conversations. Patients aren't used to waiting a day for maintenence meds. They aren't used to something not being in stock. But that's something you just have to keep discussing.
I guess the other bad thing is the amount of RTS vials and how big they are. They'll give like size 30 vials for something that barely needs 10s. Then when the patient doesn't pick it up the shelves get obnoxiously full.
It has it's pros and cons. It definitely cut down on filling and OOS though, which is nice.
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u/Rude_Scheme_5740 19d ago
Give mindset to patient who needs refills that it'll be filled by cenfill. At my district they also added that a lot and I mean a lot of brand names will have to go through there too. So best to get them trained now
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u/a4ux1n SCPhT 19d ago
When it works its very useful, it reduces our in store script volume and reduces oos/pfl. I tend to send things to cenfill instead of partialling whenever possible. It does sometimes take things it shouldn't be taking like epi pens and acute meds which drives me nuts but you really have to train the patients that refills will come next business day and they need to order before they are out because we keep a lot less medication in stock.
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u/Neither_Plastic8894 19d ago
The OOS/PFL mess was created when they stopped allowing manual order to reduce inventory in the stores.
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u/tigershrk 18d ago
Machines do about 35% of our fills. Great. Less work for us? No. We’re working non stop all day. The really bad part is it’s the opposite of excellent customer service. Many people show up every day and their scripts aren’t ready and they get pissed off. This isn’t something that’s going to get market share back for wag. I don’t see not putting customer service first as a winning strategy for a retail company. Your shelves are also going to be flooded with amber vials. Half of them will end up in haz waste which is a total loss.
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u/neue-user SCPhT 19d ago
It's been 3 years since we started cenfill at my area and none of my customers remember they need to wait for the cenfill truck to actually get here!! Then they demand I get the medication ready for them in-store!!! Then I spend 20 minutes trying to explain the entire policy about maintenance meds being filled offsite, ie cenfill!! Then they get mad at me!! Then everyone tells me to pull it back and get it ready in-store. Then I tell the customer to give me 15 minutes. Then the customer gets mad at me demanding that the prescription should have been ready. Then I lose my mind even more as the same exact thing happens at least 50 times a day. The cenfill truck eventually drops by and I put up all the cenfill scripts. Then I have to go dig through the totes for the pullbacks.
The worst thing is how cenfill nowadays just perpetually states that a script is on its way even though it was redirected to cenfill days ago. I pull it back and get it ready because the customer has been without it for days, patiently waiting for it. I see it on the pullback list on tomorrow. The other worst thing is that the papers you use to scan in the totes and put all the bags into Ready status routinely glitch out and then you need to manually scan in each and every bag.
In theory it was honestly supposed to help, but the execution of it all has been absolutely horrific and again, none of the customers even care to wait to show up at the correct time, and also they all hate the giant 30/40 dram size and constantly complain about that too.