Are CVS pharmacies still closed in the Kansas City area? Latest on Friday walk-outs
At least 12 CVS pharmacies in the Kansas City area closed late last week as pharmacists walked off the job to protest recent corporate decisions.
Now, many of them appear to have reopened.
Pharmacists have said they were protesting corporate decisions that reduced pharmacy technician hours, attempts to move pharmacists from pharmacies inside other retailers like Target to standalone stores and the recent firing of a district leader for opposing these changes in the Kansas City area.
“We are a healthcare facility and we need to be able to provide healthcare, but we absolutely can’t under these conditions,” one anonymous local pharmacist told The Star’s David Hudnall on Friday.
The Star contacted 19 CVS locations in the Kansas City area Monday — including 16 located within Target stores, where most of the closures occurred. So far, we haven’t found any that are still shut down.
Which Kansas City CVS locations are closed or short-staffed?
As of Monday afternoon, The Star hasn’t found any closed CVS locations in the metro.
We contacted all 16 local Target stores and 13 of them said their CVS pharmacies are open today — including the Lee’s Summit and Overland Park locations that were closed on Friday. The three other Target stores did not answer their phones.
The Star also contacted a handful of standalone CVS locations around the metro. The Mission Road CVS in Overland Park, which was closed on Friday, was open when The Star called. And the Midtown location at 3902 Main Street, which operated through the drive-through only with limited pharmacy staff on Saturday, is back to normal operation.
An employee at the CVS on Rainbow Boulevard in Kansas City, Kansas, said the location was operating with reduced staff but he would not elaborate on whether the shortage was impacting the pharmacy specifically.
Do you know of another CVS location whose pharmacy is currently closed due to the ongoing strike? Let us know at kcq@kcstar.com.
What should I do if my local CVS pharmacy is closed?
In some cases, pharmacists can transfer your prescription from another pharmacy location to be filled. That means if you go to an open CVS, they may be able to fill a prescription that was originally sent to a different CVS.
However, controlled substances cannot be transferred from one location to another, even at the patient’s request. If you need your medication right away, or if it’s a controlled substance, you may need to call your doctor and have them send your prescription to an open pharmacy.
The Star’s David Hudnall contributed.
Do you have more questions about labor or healthcare access in Kansas City? Ask the Service Journalism team at kcq@kcstar.com.
