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Ask HN: Why Do Phamarcies/Drug Stores Suck in US?(Walgreens, CVS, RiteAid, etc.)

3 points by vkdelta ↗ HN
Hi Folks, Lately I have been going to Walgreens quite a bit for prescription medicine and every one of interaction has been at least 45min to 2 hour to get a simple prescription medicine for a toddler. Why does it suck so much?

1/ Why does it take 1+ hour for doctors to send prescription to walgreens 1+ hour? 2/ Why does it take almost 30min in queue (in Bay area, NorCal, CA) to get the prescription? 3/ Why has no disrupted this industry? 4/ Is it lack of tech (does not make sense) or regulations? 5/ How can someone like Walgreens/CVS survive of this long with sub par customer experience? 6/ Is this problem limited to Bay area or is it similar in other US states? 7/ Are there any startups working on this problem to disrupt this industry?

8 comments

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cratermoon
If you're ok with your toddler accidentally getting the wrong medication, or having a fatal drug interaction, then sure, it's possible to "disrupt" the industry. But hey, at least you didn't have to wait in line for 30 minutes.
cvalka
Sure, no other countries apart from the US exist. I guess in the UK there's a toddler getting a fatal drug interaction every day.
bombcar
They’re not pharmacies. They’re convenience stores that sell drugs on the side.

Use a dedicated pharmacy and you may get more performance, but the doctor delay may still occur.

bell-cot
How many people would reliably pay more, for "disruptively" quicker service to be a business model? Assume that the "more" would be out-of-pocket, since medical insurers certainly don't care about your convenience.

Also - most of the work of getting your prescription from your M.D. to the pharmacy to physically being filled to being handed to you is actually performed by low-end tech's and support staff. I'd guess that hiring "enough" of those folks, given the Bay Area cost of living, might be pretty difficult.)

necovek
Can't a doctor issue a prescription for you to bring to a pharmacy?

Your experience sounds wild because that's how things are done in Serbia for ages: getting a doctor's visit is usually a wait, but once medicines are prescribed, you walk into any pharmacy with a paper prescription, and walk out in five minutes.

PaulHoule
With a paper prescription in the US, you will usually drop it off at one window and wait a minimum of 15-20 min for their heavy process and blocking queues. That includes checking with your pharmacy benefits manager (a middleman different from your health insurance provider) to see how your drug is covered (could be the difference between $3 and $300)

One alternative is a mail order pharmacy which sends you drugs ahead of time, which is good for anyone who takes a drug regularly. The best service would integrate that with the neighborhood pharmacy that gets you the pills that you were told to take when you were discharged from the ER.

I am satisfied with my neighborhood Walgreens today but back in the pandemic they had some staffing related disaster which had them running very limited hours with resulting very long queues, long queues that you had to be socially distant in. That was a mess, today is fine so long as you remember the window in midday when the whole pharmacy shuts down for lunch.

navjack27
Sounds like you need to try other pharmacies in other areas. Stuff is fine in my area besides the uptick of people diagnosed with ADHD lowering the supply for me causing me to have to go a month or two without my medication a couple times. A disruption in this industry would disrupt proper care because everything from supply to dispensing needs to be "disrupted".

I like things the way they are right now just because they are safe and predictable. I would like there to be not any startups or disruptors disrupting this industry.

Edit: I mean take my situation for example. If I take my medication as prescribed which means I run out of my medication on the day I have to get a refill that means I might not be mentally equipped to get said refill on that day. And it takes a day for the prescription to be processed. And as long as the pharmacy has the pills then it just takes me like a minute to get my medication.