In North Rhine-Westphalia, pharmacies will be able to determine their opening hours flexibly in the future – and also remain completely closed on Saturdays. The pharmacies want to deal with the great shortage of staff.
Only a week ago, pharmacies remained closed throughout Germany. The pharmacists took to the streets for higher pay – but also to draw attention to the lack of staff. In North Rhine-Westphalia, pharmacies and the Ministry of Health have now agreed on a way to deal with this problem: a kind of flextime for pharmacies.
Pharmacies in North Rhine-Westphalia were previously required to be open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., including a lunch break. Even those who needed medication on Saturdays could rely on an open pharmacy in the area.
The new regulation will look like this in the future: Pharmacies must be open for a total of six hours between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. on four days of the week, and three hours on another day. It doesn’t have to be Saturday anymore. Pharmacies could also decide to remain completely closed at weekends.
pharmacies dying impede
The pharmacists’ chambers hope to be able to use the scarce staff in the pharmacies in a more targeted manner and thus prevent pharmacies from dying out. “It depends on the location of the pharmacy whether an adjustment is worthwhile,” says a spokesman for the Westphalia-Lippe Chamber of Pharmacists. “These are only the minimum opening hours. Nobody forbids a pharmacist to open longer. It will affect the city center pharmacy in the pedestrian zone less, but rather country pharmacies.”
The network of pharmacies in Germany has been getting smaller and smaller for years. According to the Federal Union of German Pharmacist Associations, there were 17,939 pharmacies nationwide at the end of March. This is the lowest level in 40 years.
The industry wants to become more attractive on the labor market with more flexible opening hours. Because, as is so often the case in the medical field, there is a massive lack of staff: 97 percent of the pharmacies of the North Rhine-Westphalia Association of Pharmacists stated in a survey that they had a higher workload due to a lack of staff. Advertised positions remained vacant for up to five months. In every second pharmacy in the Rhineland, the shortage of staff would even go so far that the previously prescribed opening times could no longer be guaranteed.
Safe supply?
“If employees want to work part-time, then this will soon be possible more flexibly,” said the spokesman for the Westphalia-Lippe Chamber of Pharmacists. Up to 80 percent of the workforce is female, and the compatibility of working hours and family is a major issue. Rural pharmacies in particular would have more chances of recruiting specialist staff.
The chambers emphasize that this does not change anything in terms of nationwide care. There will also continue to be emergency pharmacies open around the clock. Chambers of pharmacists in Saxony, Brandenburg and Rhineland-Palatinate have already made working hours for pharmacies more flexible. There too, as is now the case in North Rhine-Westphalia, 27 hours of on-call duty per week are mandatory.