From Burnout to Balance: How Walgreens' Hybrid Model Is Addressing the Pharmacy

In an interview with Pharmacy Times, Rick Gates, chief pharmacy officer at Walgreens, outlines the company's newly launched hybrid pharmacist model, which allows pharmacists to split their time between traditional in-store patient care and centralized remote settings, offering greater flexibility and professional variety in direct response to workforce feedback. Gates explains that the model—currently piloting across 6 states—was developed to address pharmacist burnout, staffing shortages, and evolving career expectations and is designed around schedule predictability and expanded clinical opportunities. The initiative is integrated into Walgreens' broader operational transformation, including the expansion of micro fulfillment centers and centralized services aimed at reducing in-store burden and enabling deeper patient engagement. Gates acknowledges that while the program is still in its early stages, encouraging feedback signals likely expansion and represents what he calls a first step toward creating more meaningful and sustainable pharmacist roles in the community setting.

Pharmacy Times: Can you introduce yourself and explain your current role?

Rick Gates: My name is Rick Gates. I'm the chief pharmacy officer at Walgreens, a community pharmacist by background, and have been working at the Support Center at Walgreens for a little while now.

Pharmacy Times: How would you describe the hybrid pharmacist role — what makes it distinct from a traditional pharmacist position, and what does it allow pharmacists to do differently?

Gates: I think what's important is that the hybrid role allows pharmacists to practice both in the community setting, which is what I grew up doing in stores, and also in our centralized settings. Rather than limiting them to working in a single work environment, a lot of the feedback we've gotten from pharmacists is that it gives them greater flexibility and professional variety and really gives them career mobility that's different from what they've had before.

It does continue to maintain the strong support for the individual relationships they have with their patients, which I think is really important for us. But they also get the chance to work with a wider network of patients and digital channels, supporting multiple stores across the state or even across the country, depending on state laws.

I look at it as blending centralized services support with the retail practice setting to make a difference in pharmacist practice, to make better use of our expertise across our platform, and really to strengthen our operational stability and give more flexibility for our pharmacists going forward.

Pharmacy Times: What specific workforce challenges or pharmacist feedback prompted Walgreens to develop the hybrid pharmacist model?

Gates: We developed it based on feedback from our pharmacists. It's really about addressing staffing shortages and responding to changing expectations. What a pharmacist is looking for today is a lot different from what they were looking for when I graduated. So we continue to listen and work with our pharmacists to ask, how can we continue to evolve the role to make it more compelling for them?

Pharmacists have shared that they want more balance in what they're doing, more support, and more opportunities for clinical expertise outside of a traditional in-store role. The hybrid model helps address those needs by creating a role that can flex between both settings. Ultimately, we want to keep pharmacies fully staffed—that's an important part of what we do—but also deliver a better experience for our patients while supporting our team members as they ask for some changes.

Pharmacy Times: Can you walk us through what a typical week might look like for a hybrid pharmacist? How do they balance in-store patient care with centralized or remote responsibilities?

Gates: It really comes down to four days working in a traditional setting and one day working in a centralized facility. That does give a bit more flexibility. In a centralized facility, pharmacists support patient care by doing things like prescription review, clinical services, consultations, outreach to patients, medication therapy management, and similar services where we're really working to help patients achieve their outcomes.

They can work from regional sites, microfulfillment centers that we're expanding across the country, or even work-at-home settings—though that all depends on the state laws we must work within. Most importantly, the schedule is designed to be balanced and predictable, which are things we've been asked for quite a bit. It supports work-life balance and offers a different work environment for pharmacists than what we've traditionally had.

Pharmacy Times: One concern with remote or centralized pharmacy models is maintaining strong patient relationships. How does Walgreens ensure that continuity of care isn't compromised when pharmacists shift between settings?

Gates: The way I look at it is that four days a week they're still in stores, still working with their patients and providing the care they're used to. So the connectivity to their community, their local store, and their patients is not compromised in any way.

The one day a week in a centralized setting simply provides a different kind of flexibility, different types of roles, and different support mechanisms where they can practice pharmacy in a different clinical setting. Digital channels bridge the two environments, allowing pharmacists to stay connected with their patients while also giving them more variety in what they're doing.

The other thing I'd add is that the model really improves overall staffing stability, which is important for us going forward. Patients will benefit from stores being open and fully staffed, and they'll also still benefit from knowing their community pharmacist who is in their store most days of the week.

Pharmacy Times: Now that the role has launched in six states, what early data or pharmacist feedback has stood out most — and has anything surprised you about how the model is performing on the ground?

Gates: It hasn't surprised us. The feedback and interest from our early pilots in the first six states have been overwhelmingly positive. Pharmacists are always telling us that they like having more variety in what they're doing and predictability in their schedule, and they also appreciate being able to stay connected with their community, their patients, and the teams they work with each and every day.

When I worked in stores, my team was my family, and I think that's really important to what pharmacists are looking for as well. We're still in early stages, and so far it's performing well. We expect to continue to learn—is one day a week the right amount? Should it be more? Do we need to look at different structures for technicians and pharmacists? There's so much more we're going to learn from these pilots, and then you'll see how we really want to expand this going forward. If it's truly a benefit that our pharmacists and team members are looking for, you'll see us expand it.

Pharmacy Times: Pharmacist burnout has been a well-documented issue across the industry. How does this hybrid model specifically address the stressors that drive burnout, and are you seeing any early signs of improved retention?

Gates: It goes back to continuing to listen to our pharmacists and team members. We want to make a role that's really sustainable over time, and we want it to be consistent with the feedback they're giving us—things like flexibility, professional variety, and predictable schedules. So I think we're addressing some of that feedback, and this model is a direct response to it. It's offering a structure that our pharmacists are looking for.

We're learning from it to see if there's something more we can do to really support our pharmacists going forward, and it really builds on the investments we're making to evolve our operating model. Expanding things like microfulfillment centers and centralized services—we're doing things to take the burden off of our stores so they have more time for direct patient care, to really work on outcomes for their patients, and to have that connectivity in their local communities.

The hybrid pharmacist model and central support are just another evolution of how we're making it easier for our pharmacists and stores to have that direct, one-on-one care. We're early on, but this feels like it's going to be a sustainable role and will really support our long-term focus. We'll evolve it and learn a lot from the six states we have out there.

Pharmacy Times: Are there plans to expand the hybrid role beyond the current six states, and do you see this model influencing how the broader community pharmacy industry thinks about workforce design going forward?

Gates: That's an important question, because the future of the pharmacy workforce is a really important question facing not just Walgreens—it's facing the entire industry. When you look at enrollments in pharmacy schools and the practice settings pharmacists are choosing, we really need to make sure we are listening to the workforce and evolving what we're doing.

I think we're taking meaningful steps. We're moving more routine work out of our stores through our micro fulfillment centers, and we're really trying to simplify workflows in our stores so it's a much more compelling work environment for our pharmacists. We have to get creative and start modernizing how we hire and train our pharmacists differently than we did many years ago.

I think the hybrid role is going to be an exciting evolution of what we're trying to do, but we're still in the learning phase. Early signs show that we will probably start to expand it and continue to learn. We'll look at different types of roles—are there different evolutions for technicians and others? The more we can do to support our stores centrally, to free up time for one-on-one patient connectivity, the better. This is the first step in creating more meaningful and varied roles for pharmacists in the community setting.