At least once a week, Aisha Torres arrives at her job as a technician at a CVS specialty pharmacy in Redlands, California, only to find that she’s already behind. The company’s network of specialty pharmacies serve patients with complex and chronic conditions who often need rare or expensive medications delivered to their door. But due to staffing shortages across the country, she said, an increasing number of patients from the East Coast and Midwest get forwarded to her pharmacy.
When her CVS opens at 7 a.m., the pharmacy staff is therefore often already working at full capacity, forcing new patients to the end of the line and, in some cases, delaying their service until the following day. During one week in mid-August, this happened almost every day.
