March 4, 2026
Photo courtesy of Burger King
Will a Hybrid Pharmacist Role Help Solve Labor Issues for Walgreens?
Walgreens has created a “hybrid pharmacist” role in an effort to combat pharmacist burnout and workforce shortages.
The role enables pharmacists to split their week between working at the traditional community pharmacy some days and working from a centralized pharmacy desk on other days.
At the centralized pharmacy desks outside the store, they work alongside other pharmacists reviewing prescriptions, provide clinical support and consult with patients and providers over phone and e-mail. Depending on state regulations, hybrid pharmacists may be able to do the role from their own home.
Early feedback and interest have been strong, with participating pharmacists valuing the role’s “flexibility and variety,” Walgreens said. Benefits cited include more predictable schedules, varied pharmacy practice settings, and the potential to expand pharmacy career pathways without leaving direct patient care behind.
Creating a centralized role for those tasks also frees up in-store pharmacists to spend more time supporting patients in person.
A profile of Mariana Endeley-Matute, a pharmacist at a store in Little Rock, AR, found her experience working in the centralized services location helped reframe her role within the in-store pharmacy. She said in the press release, “I can see how what we do in centralized services affects the stores, and when I’m at the store, I’m able to explain how they’re supporting us. I feel like an ambassador in both places, for the other perspective.
She also appreciated the work-life balance created by taking on two differentiated functions. Endeley-Matute said, “You get time away from the store, and time away from the desk, so when you come back to either, it feels fresh again. It’s actually the best of both worlds, like having your cake and eating it, too.”
The hybrid pharmacist position has been rolled out in six states: Arkansas, Missouri, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Tennessee.
Walgreens’ new role arrives as the healthcare industry is currently grappling with a severe shortage of pharmacists as the job has become more demanding due to a myriad of challenges facing retail pharmacy.
The sixth annual Workforce Wellbeing Survey of 6,500 pharmacists and pharmacy technicians, from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society found 87% of the pharmacy workforce is at risk of burnout. Among the factors creating stress was inadequate staffing (70%); managing medicines shortages, (56%); lack of work-life balance (49%); lack of protected learning time (47%); and long working hours (34%).
Burnout risks are high across all frontline roles with flexible scheduling often cited as part of the solution, according to numerous surveys.
JLL’s report, “The Forgotten Workforce: Delivering A High-Performance Workplace For Frontline Workers,” finds frontline workers consistently expressing lower satisfaction rates as hybrid work policies have elevated work-life balance for corporate roles. The research offers five key recommendations: designing infrastructure that supports flexible scheduling; prioritizing physical environment upgrades, including ergonomic zones and acoustic solutions; integrating wellbeing infrastructure into operational design; creating AI-ready learning environments; and developing spaces that foster managerial empowerment.
BrainTrust
Gary Sankary
Retail Industry Strategy, Esri
Mark Ryski
Founder, CEO & Author, HeadCount Corporation
Scott Benedict
Founder & CEO, Benedict Enterprises LLC
Recent Discussions
Discussion Questions
Do you see the hybrid pharmacist option helping make the pharmacist role more appealing to help reduce shortages for Walgreens?
Can other frontline roles similarly benefit much from added flexibility and variety?
Poll
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Pharmacist burnout is real, serious, and largely the industry’s own making. Years of cost-cutting, staff reductions, and steadily increasing prescription volume have turned what should be a clinical role into something closer to an assembly line. That’s the elephant in the room here.
I give Walgreens enormous kudos for trying something. Remote pharmacy models have been worked well for Amazon, Optimum, and others. I think that makes it a no-brainer for Walgreens to respond.
But I want to raise a concern that may be more sentimental than strategic. There’s a reason people choose to walk into a brick-and-mortar pharmacy, and for many, that reason is the pharmacist. That relationship is real, and it has clinical value. If the hybrid model gradually shifts the in-store pharmacist toward a distribution role while actual clinical judgment moves to a centralized desk, that may solve one problem while creating another. The temptation to add more patients to a workload may just shift where pharmacists experience burnout.
I’m also genuinely uncertain about the supervision dynamic between a pharmacist reviewing remotely and the person physically distributing the medication. That’s a checks-and-balances question in the back of my mind.
Innovation in frontline flexibility is needed. I just hope the patient relationship doesn’t become collateral damage in the process.
100%
My gut reaction is this would interfere with the team building that’s important in an intimate workplace – as I would think a local pharamcy would be – and it doesn’t sound like something I would personally like; but it also sounds from the initial feedback that my gut may be wrong, so I’ll not go further in criticizing it. That having been said, it appears many of the issues – inadequate staffing, long working hours – don’t have a quick fix, short of spending more money…something I imagine they are unwilling (or unable) to do.
What is the root cause of burnout? In quite a lot of cases, it’s because drugstores are not properly investing in staff or the support they need. Admittedly, the administrative side of the role has grown over recent years but, again, this could be remedied by providing extra support or making better use of technology. The proper solution, therefore, is not to shuffle working locations, it’s to fix the problems.
This seems like a meaningful way to balance limited pharmacist resources while delivering for patients. Pharmacists are a critical part of the healthcare system, and anything that improves access to services and the quality of care is worth considering. And the positive impact this initiative can have on work-life balance, stress levels and burnout of pharmacists could make Walgreens an attractive alternative to their current employer.
Walgreens’ hybrid pharmacist role is an interesting experiment, but whether it truly addresses the labor shortage depends on understanding the root cause of the shortage itself. The program allows pharmacists to split their week between working in a retail pharmacy and performing clinical or prescription-review work from a centralized location or remote setting, providing more predictable schedules and a greater variety of work environments. The model is intended to improve work-life balance, reduce burnout, and free in-store pharmacists to spend more time with patients while centralized teams handle administrative tasks.
However, the real question is whether flexibility is the actual issue Walgreens is trying to solve. Retail pharmacy has been facing a growing shortage of pharmacists driven by multiple factors: long hours, increasing workload, burnout, staffing shortages, and a decline in pharmacy school graduates. If the core problem is schedule rigidity, then a hybrid model could help. But if the underlying issues are compensation, benefits, staffing levels, tuition costs, or limited career advancement opportunities, then changing the work location alone may only have a modest impact.
That said, there is a broader lesson here for frontline roles. Flexibility and variety can absolutely improve job appeal, especially in roles that historically offered little autonomy or schedule control. Hybrid scheduling, expanded career pathways, cross-functional roles, and technology-enabled workflows can all make frontline jobs more attractive. But those innovations tend to work best when they are layered on top of the fundamentals—competitive pay, manageable workloads, and clear advancement opportunities.
In other words, initiatives like the hybrid pharmacist role are a positive step and worth testing. But they should be seen as one piece of the solution, not the solution itself. Retailers and healthcare providers alike will ultimately need to address the full set of factors influencing workforce satisfaction if they want to sustainably solve labor shortages in critical frontline roles.
Is this a short-term fix or a long-term solution? A major effort should be made to address the root cause of the problem. Gary Sankary explains his observation. Walgreens solution doesn’t address any of Gary’s concerns.
Same as every other cost cutting measure. Tried talking to a pharmacist by phone at your local CVS lately?
the Problem is this is all about expense mmgement t and lack of floor management. I’ve watched these pharmacy counters. Either not enough people or people doing nothing while the line continues to grow.
we have a very real problem. I even experienced a severe lack of customer service when I went back to a former doctor at Cleveland Clinic in Florida. They’ve lost the meaning of their own slogan “patients first.” I think they did this so they could afford their new hospital. I will not be going back
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Pharmacist burnout is real, serious, and largely the industry’s own making. Years of cost-cutting, staff reductions, and steadily increasing prescription volume have turned what should be a clinical role into something closer to an assembly line. That’s the elephant in the room here.
I give Walgreens enormous kudos for trying something. Remote pharmacy models have been worked well for Amazon, Optimum, and others. I think that makes it a no-brainer for Walgreens to respond.
But I want to raise a concern that may be more sentimental than strategic. There’s a reason people choose to walk into a brick-and-mortar pharmacy, and for many, that reason is the pharmacist. That relationship is real, and it has clinical value. If the hybrid model gradually shifts the in-store pharmacist toward a distribution role while actual clinical judgment moves to a centralized desk, that may solve one problem while creating another. The temptation to add more patients to a workload may just shift where pharmacists experience burnout.
I’m also genuinely uncertain about the supervision dynamic between a pharmacist reviewing remotely and the person physically distributing the medication. That’s a checks-and-balances question in the back of my mind.
Innovation in frontline flexibility is needed. I just hope the patient relationship doesn’t become collateral damage in the process.
100%
My gut reaction is this would interfere with the team building that’s important in an intimate workplace – as I would think a local pharamcy would be – and it doesn’t sound like something I would personally like; but it also sounds from the initial feedback that my gut may be wrong, so I’ll not go further in criticizing it. That having been said, it appears many of the issues – inadequate staffing, long working hours – don’t have a quick fix, short of spending more money…something I imagine they are unwilling (or unable) to do.
What is the root cause of burnout? In quite a lot of cases, it’s because drugstores are not properly investing in staff or the support they need. Admittedly, the administrative side of the role has grown over recent years but, again, this could be remedied by providing extra support or making better use of technology. The proper solution, therefore, is not to shuffle working locations, it’s to fix the problems.
This seems like a meaningful way to balance limited pharmacist resources while delivering for patients. Pharmacists are a critical part of the healthcare system, and anything that improves access to services and the quality of care is worth considering. And the positive impact this initiative can have on work-life balance, stress levels and burnout of pharmacists could make Walgreens an attractive alternative to their current employer.
Walgreens’ hybrid pharmacist role is an interesting experiment, but whether it truly addresses the labor shortage depends on understanding the root cause of the shortage itself. The program allows pharmacists to split their week between working in a retail pharmacy and performing clinical or prescription-review work from a centralized location or remote setting, providing more predictable schedules and a greater variety of work environments. The model is intended to improve work-life balance, reduce burnout, and free in-store pharmacists to spend more time with patients while centralized teams handle administrative tasks.
However, the real question is whether flexibility is the actual issue Walgreens is trying to solve. Retail pharmacy has been facing a growing shortage of pharmacists driven by multiple factors: long hours, increasing workload, burnout, staffing shortages, and a decline in pharmacy school graduates. If the core problem is schedule rigidity, then a hybrid model could help. But if the underlying issues are compensation, benefits, staffing levels, tuition costs, or limited career advancement opportunities, then changing the work location alone may only have a modest impact.
That said, there is a broader lesson here for frontline roles. Flexibility and variety can absolutely improve job appeal, especially in roles that historically offered little autonomy or schedule control. Hybrid scheduling, expanded career pathways, cross-functional roles, and technology-enabled workflows can all make frontline jobs more attractive. But those innovations tend to work best when they are layered on top of the fundamentals—competitive pay, manageable workloads, and clear advancement opportunities.
In other words, initiatives like the hybrid pharmacist role are a positive step and worth testing. But they should be seen as one piece of the solution, not the solution itself. Retailers and healthcare providers alike will ultimately need to address the full set of factors influencing workforce satisfaction if they want to sustainably solve labor shortages in critical frontline roles.
In other news: https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2026/01/28/walmart-boosts-pay-potential-for-pharmacy-technicians-elevates-3000-roles
Is this a short-term fix or a long-term solution? A major effort should be made to address the root cause of the problem. Gary Sankary explains his observation. Walgreens solution doesn’t address any of Gary’s concerns.
Same as every other cost cutting measure. Tried talking to a pharmacist by phone at your local CVS lately?
the Problem is this is all about expense mmgement t and lack of floor management. I’ve watched these pharmacy counters. Either not enough people or people doing nothing while the line continues to grow.
we have a very real problem. I even experienced a severe lack of customer service when I went back to a former doctor at Cleveland Clinic in Florida. They’ve lost the meaning of their own slogan “patients first.” I think they did this so they could afford their new hospital. I will not be going back