Hate Mail Wednesday

Well, this is awkward. We were all pumped up and ready to go for Hate Mail Wednesday but we didn't receive any hate mail over the past week! We did receive many supportive emails and tips and we appreciate each and every one of them. Keep the information flowing guys. As always, if you have the inside scoop on anything within the Walgreens Medicare Part B Support Center for diabetic supplies, send us an e-mail at exwalgreens@yahoo.com. Also, we received plenty of responses to our search of people with film experience or equipment. We have found some great people who will work well for this project and should be fine with what we have for now, but if you have another way you could lend your support or creativity don't hesitate to let us know.

Whistleblower Protection

When one finds themselves in the difficult position of working for a company that is partaking in either unethical or illegal activity, eventually they'll have to make a choice of either going along and pretending everything is fine, or doing the right thing and speaking out against it. With the economy being the way it is right now, job security takes top priority among workers and many aren't exactly jumping at the chance to rock the boat and put their employment in jeopardy if they do find themselves in this position. Fortunately the government has safeguards in place which protect workers who speak out against wrongdoings at their place of employment. These safeguards protect everything from speaking out about product safety issues to alerting the authorities of HIPAA violations. Click here to view a partial list of these statutes and protections.

Sometimes it even pays to be a whistleblower. We mentioned a settlement the other day from back in 2008 where Walgreens was caught dispensing the wrong form of medication because one had a much higher profit margin than the other (ex: dispensing fluoxetine tablets when the prescription was written for capsules). Walgreens ended up shelling out $35 million after a probe by the justice department. The investigation was sparked by whistleblower pharmacist Bernard Lisitza who filed the initial suit. The good news? As part of the settlement, whistleblower Bernard Lisitza received $5 million from Walgreens. Not bad at all.


When Bernard Lisitza first became aware of the policy to "upsell" to the form of medication that paid the most, he very likely felt torn and it was no doubt a tough decision to make to do the right thing. Pharmacists typically make a good $100,000+ a year and it's not easy for someone in that position to risk his income and career to take a stand for what's right. But that's the moral of the story here: there's actually very little risk at all because of the protection whistleblowers have. In fact in his case and many other cases, he was rewarded quite generously for his guts to take a stand and say "I'm not going to sit by and let this happen anymore".


If you find yourself sitting there in a similar dilemma, if you're having to make that conscious decision, always remember that you'll always get further in life by doing the right thing and being honest. It will all work out in the end and your community will thank you. Go with your gut instinct and don't ever feel like someone has you by the throat just because they sign your checks. Because as we've seen in Benard Lisitza's case, sometimes there's a much larger check right around the corner.

Walgreens sued for selling patient data to data mining companies

From kevinmd.com:

Walgreens is being sued by customers who are not happy that their prescription information – even though it has been de-identified – is being sold by Walgreens to data-mining companies.

The plaintiff group of customers is suing to share in the profits realized by Walgreens from trading in the de-identified data.

And healthcareitnews.com:

The suit cites Walgreen's 2010 annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which lists "purchased prescription files" as intangible assets worth $749 million.

Yet another example of the type of "ethical business practices" you can expect from Walgreens. One would think you could trust a pharmacy to protect your data and only hold on to it for the purposes of serving you as a customer / patient, not profiting off it by selling it to data mining companies. Oh hell, who are we kidding... this is Walgreens we're talking about.

Walgreens Medicare Part B Center: From the rumorville

We've just received a tip from a friend of Walgreens Medicare Part B Center Watch via e-mail. It hasn't been confirmed yet but we're told that Walgreens management is working with Fraley & Company, L.L.C. in trying to stop information from being published on this site. Fraley & Company is an accounting and business consulting firm located in Cincinnati run by Don Brauning. At this time we're not quite sure if this is related to speculation that they're getting government incentive money for training new hires or if it's more of a public relations effort. Either way it makes things more fun around here. Anyone with more information can send us an e-mail at exwalgreens@yahoo.com. Stay tuned...

Walgreens Medicare Part B Support Center: Hate Mail Wednesday

Due to some of the irate comments and e-mails we've gotten over the past couple days, we thought it would be fun to start a weekly segment called Hate Mail Wednesday. It appears that we've ruffled a few feathers out there and a couple people seem upset that we dared to publish information about Walgreens. Though we do value these outbursts for their comedic potential, I think a few of you have gotten the wrong idea about what we're about here. Have you ever had to read a book in school and then wrote a book report based on what you've read? That's pretty much what this is. We had some interesting experiences at Walgreens and learned some interesting things. It would be a shame to just forget everything without using it as a learning experience for everyone involved. And we thought it would be interesting for others to share as well so we can get a plethora of information from different perspectives. Who knows, maybe we'll end up writing a book together that you'll be reading to your grandchildren. The possibilities are endless. Now, I can understand if not everyone shares our enthusiasm but the hate is simply uncalled for. Take a deep breath and step away from the computer for a few minutes if you have to. If you're going to write us hate mail though, please keep in mind to make it creative and entertaining. This will increase your chances of it appearing on Hate Mail Wednesday.

Now on to the hate mail, this one comes from Walgreens employee Donyel Warden:

They did this to slow down sales ? The SALES center .. Slowing down sales.. Hmmm Nope u both are pathetic and wrong I've read some of your other bs post and again u are wrong grasping at straws.. Not even good straws, more like straws that were used in a cheap drink at a sleaze bar chewed on by a drunk w/his good tooth n thrown away ite useless but worse than that u r spewing outlies about a co. That u have a personal issue with. Inspector dipshit detective dunbass u should prob find something better to do with your time better than making up lies against a co. Ur mad at bc u simply just couldn't cut it put on your big boy pants and get over it

Donyel you owe us a new spellcheck because ours just exploded after pasting that! All kidding aside, you gotta respect an employee who goes out of her way to defend her company like that. You can tell she is very loyal to the company and is trying to do the right thing by defending it. So your heart's in the right place Ms. Warden. We are going to have to knock off a few points for calling us "dunbasses" though. But all in all it's a great start which is why we chose it for our first Hate Mail Wednesday.

A couple points here to address a few things you mentioned. The Sales Center...slowing down sales. Yes, that was our thought as well. WTF? Sales managers slowing down sales on purpose? No way. Unfortunately that is the truth as witnessed by everyone there, and the ridiculousness of it is why we thought it was worth mentioning. We wish we were kidding but I really think it's a symptom of a very small division within a gigantic corporation. If the Walgreens support center for diabetic supplies was a small business and all it did was sales, like how Liberty probably was when it first started, you can guarantee that things like that wouldn't happen, because everyone in small sales companies is focused on sales and the bottom line. With this small division within the huge company that Walgreens is, it no doubt ends up a bit off the radar of corporate executives who aren't even in the same building but are in another state.

Walgreens Medicare Part B Center: Purposefully slowing down sales

I witnessed some ridiculous things during my time at the Walgreens Support Center. One of them was that of management purposefully slowing down sales because of a backlog in the order audit department. For the support center, Walgreens uses software by Interactive Intelligence called Interaction Client which is hooked up to an auto-dialer that makes all the calls for the reps. With the autodialer, the sales reps make no manual calls and they have no say-so in who gets called. They simply sit and wait for the next call to come to them. Reps receive a new call about a minute after dispositioning the last call, on average. The autodialer has a useful purpose of screening out most garbage calls, such as no answer, disconnected lines, and voicemails. Such calls are never sent to the reps; the reps only receive the calls when the line is picked up by someone on the other line. This makes for a more productive work day for the sales rep, as he goes from one customer to the next, and not having to waste time with busy, disconnected lines or lines with no answer.

For a couple days at a time, this autodialer was turned off by management. Was there a malfunction in the software? No. With the autodialer turned off, the sales rep receives the customer profile and then manually dials. Which in other contexts wouldn't be a problem except in this case it resulted in reps spending all day long getting nothing but no answers, voicemails, and disconnected lines - all the garbage calls that the autodialer had been in effect screening out. Sales went down dramatically. Whereas before you'd see a bunch of tallies on the board from the day's sales, now there were only a few sales total from around 20 reps. You can't make sales to disconnected lines or when there's no answer. So why was the autodialer turned off? Specifically to stop sales. It turns out that the sales department was making too many sales and the order audit department couldn't keep up. Which made me wonder again, why are we hiring another 40 this week, and next week, when evidently we're already selling too much? If we're selling too much now how could we ever keep up with sales in later weeks?

During this time, reps were told not to worry. The decrease in sales won't count against them towards their "conversion percentage" - a ratio that shows sales productivity per calls made. But however you slice it, it did practically stop everyone's sales for a few days, and even if the conversion rate was unchanged, less sales certainly does effect commission checks that employees rely on. This is secondary though to how dumb of a business move it was. At any real sales company, to see sales drop to practically zero would have had any sales manager sweating, but here everyone walked around calmly with no concern at all that no one was selling anything. It was the result they intended.

Walgreens Medicare Support Center: Scripts for the reps to follow

At the Walgreens Medicare Part B Support Center, everything is tightly controlled and reps are given calling scripts to use while calling customers. To manage calls, they use a program called Interaction Client, developed by Interactive Intelligence. Interaction Client works hand in hand with Interaction Scripter to manage calls, scripting, and to process information. Below is an example of what Interaction Client looks like:

 
Below is the script reps are to go by when making calls:


Hello this is ________ from Walgreens. I'm calling today to let you know there's a way that Walgreens can help you take advantage of your medicare part B benefits.

Before I continue, I must let you know that this call may be recorded for quality and training purposes.

This benefit is for medicare customers who are testing their blood sugar.
Mr. ________, does your doctor have you testing your blood sugar for diabetes?

[ yes ] [no ]

We want to let you know that Walgreens provides the option of going to your local walgreens for your testing supplies or walgreens can provide you a 90 day supply of
test strips, lancets, lancing device, and control solution delivered right to your door for free.

Do you have traditional medicare including part B? (red, white, and blue card)

[ yes ] [no ]

How are you currently receiving your test strips and lancets?

[Walgreens] [mail service] [other]

Do you have another insurance you take to the doctors office to cover your copay (supplemental or secondary insurance)

[ yes ] [no ]


What is the name of that plan? [                     ]


Ok Great, based on what you've told me, we will bill medicare for 80% of the cost of supplies and bill your supplemental 20%, resulting in no out of pocket cost to you.

I can now verify your eligibility for the service, I just need your Medicare ID # on your medicare card, I will be happy to wait if you need a moment to locate it.

Medicare ID #: [                         ]

-------------------------------

If the sales reps reach a voicemail, they are to leave this message:


Hello, this is the Walgreens support center, we are reaching out to our valued customers letting them know that there is a way that Walgreens can help you take advantage of your medicare part B benefits which includes letting Walgreens come to you with home delivery of medical testing supplies.

If you're interested in hearing more about how walgreens can help you with your benefits, you can give us a call at 888-380-8030.

Thank you for being a loyal Walgreens customer, we look forward to speaking with you.