Thursday, August 23, 2007

U.S. To Be Short on Pharmacists and High on Prescriptions by 2020

According to Reliable One Staffing Services, the United States will be 157,000 professionals short on pharmacists by 2020. There will be 7.2 billion prescriptions to be filled per year by 2020 also, according to the press release, and that is over two times the number of prescriptions in 2001.

The Reliable One press release indicates that the shortage of staffing is already evident in retail pharmacies by the employees' being harried, their schedules overly long, and the greater turn around time in filling the prescriptions.

Reliable One Staffing Services is trying to meet the needs of pharmacies nationwide by offering premium pay to new graduates, pharmacists nearing retirement and other pharmacists looking to earn extra income by accepting out of state assignments. Out of state assignments will require additional licensing expenses, according to Dale Hetrick, Operations Director at Reliable One Staffing Services, and that factor is one of the reasons for the extra monetary incentives.

Hetrick gave statistics that exemplified the growing U.S. replacement needs with the shortage of pharmacists. Recently, one Ohio client of Reliable One Staffing Services asked for professional pharmacy coverage for an average of 700 hours per week for two weeks in just one area surrounding a large city whereas a Utah client asked for an average of 250 hours per week for six weeks in just one metropolitan area.

The gap between the number of pharmacists and the geometrically increasing number of prescriptions is expecting to continue to rise, and the situation is expected to get worse before it gets better, according to the press release.

"Even one pharmacist taking on a single additional shift each week would make a difference," stated Hetrick. He further added, "None of us want to think about our aging parents or children going without essential medications because the local drugstore was shut down.."

The Media is instructed that more information about the shortage can be obtained by calling Mr. Dale Hetrick at 1-800-640-2070 or by visiting the Reliable One Staffing Services website (http://www.ross1.com ).

Reliable One Staffing Services is a nationwide staffing services for pharmacists and other medical professionals. Its headquarters are located in the Detroit metropolitan area of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. On the website are documents related to OSHA such as a zipped file containing the OSHA training manual, Fire Hazards training, Electrical training, etc. There are also other training documents such as one for methamphetamine training. There are individual applications for differing professionals

Sources

August 18th, 2007, Reliable One Staffing Services Press Release

URL:

http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/view_press_release.php?rID=32196

Reliable One Staffing Services Website

URL:

http://www.ross1.com

Source

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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