Walgreens partners with pharmacy school deans to combat pharmacist shortage

Walgreens is taking a unique approach to solving the pharmacist shortage: creating the Walgreens Deans Advisory Council to boost the number of students enrolling in pharmacy schools and execute on other goals plaguing the industry, the retail pharmacy giant announced on February 5.

The council will consist of company executives and deans from 17 pharmacy schools and will meet quarterly to discuss attraction and retention strategies, according to Walgreens. The first meeting is slated for early March.

Rick Gates, SVP and chief pharmacy officer at Walgreens, told Healthcare Brew that the council—which includes deans from around the US to make sure there is a “range of views and opinions”—plans to publicly disclose the goals it sets during meetings and give periodic updates on progress made.

“This isn’t just lip service of doing some sort of council to make us sound good,” Gates said. “This is something that we want to actually show demonstrable changes and impacts that we’re having, both across the educational pieces of how they’re training pharmacists and getting them excited to be in the profession, but also how we’re changing an operating model as an independent pharmacy.”

The council’s formation comes as pharmacies around the country, from big-box retailers to family-run businesses, struggle to hire pharmacists and technicians.

Per a Walgreens statement, the number of students applying to pharmacy school has fallen more than 60% over the past decade. There were 60,882 job postings for pharmacists in the first three quarters of 2023, but just 13,323 pharmacists graduated pharmacy school in 2022, according to data from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine.

“While the demand for pharmacy services is expected to increase over the next several years, like many other healthcare entities and a wide range of other industries, pharmacy is facing a pronounced labor shortage,” Walgreens executives said in a statement. “The pharmacy operating model needs to evolve, and pharmacy school deans are critical partners in helping Walgreens and the industry overall solve for the current workplace challenges that are also impacting pharmacy school enrollment.”

Walgreens hasn’t invested any money to create the council, but Gates said it’s likely the company will make a financial investment in the future to achieve the council’s goals.

In addition to recruiting new pharmacists, the council will serve as a “sounding board” to help Walgreens figure out strategies to improve the pharmacist work experience, such as flexible staffing models and eliminating task-based retail metrics from performance reviews, Walgreens executives said in a statement.