Nearly 350 new jobs will be available in Waco next spring when a new national pharmacy call center at the Waco Veterans Affairs Medical Center completes an expansion project.

The Pharmacy Customer Care Center employs 159 people, mostly contact representatives who field veterans’ prescription-related calls.

But now the facility is in the middle of an expansion project to create additional work space in Building 90 — its headquarters at the VA.

Contact Representative Rodolfo Rene Vaquera fields veterans’ calls at the Pharmacy Customer Care Call Center in Waco.
Rod Aydelotte / Tribune-Herald

Once the project is complete next spring, the call center will increase its staff to 500, associate director Deanna Mills said.

“This is going to be a huge deal for Waco to have that many jobs open up at one time, and it will allow us to expand our services and better help veterans,” Mills said.

Sarah Roberts, senior vice president of economic development for the Greater Waco Chamber of Commerce, said the increase in jobs will provide a great boon to the local economy.

She said the call center originally projected 224 jobs, so an expansion to 500 is impressive growth.

“That’s a great piece of news for the marketplace that they are more than doubling the number of jobs, and these are very competitive federal jobs,” Roberts said. “Certainly, doubling your labor force is no small feat, no matter what size (company) you are.”

The facility opened last fall after it moved its operations from its base in Topeka, Kan., to Waco. U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards worked with VA officials to secure funding to place the call center at the Waco VA hospital.

The call center is an arm of the VA Health Resource Center and handles pharmacy-related calls for 39 VA hospitals in 18 states, including the Waco, Temple, Dallas and San Antonio medical centers.

Mills is a pharmacist and worked at the Olin E. Teague VA Medical Center in Temple for 10 years before becoming the call center’s director.

She said the call center helps relieve VA staffers from being overwhelmed with prescription calls and allows them to focus on patient care.

Deanna Mills, pharmacist and associate director of the Pharmacy Customer Care Call Center, sits in the facility’s training center for new hires. The center is expecting to add nearly 350 new positions next spring.
Rod Aydelotte / Tribune-Herald

“Before the HRC call center, the phones in the hospitals would just keep ringing and ringing, and you really couldn’t do much work,” Mills said. “As a pharmacist, I would get called to the phone to answer questions, and it would take me away from focusing on the veterans in the lobby.”

Most VA hospitals have 40 phones split between every department, Mills said. The call center has 700 phones strictly for pharmacy inquiries such as drug renewals, tracking medicines sent by mail and getting new prescriptions.

Mills said the center handled 148,182 calls between Sept. 21 and Oct. 22.

About 34 percent of the call center employees live in Waco. The staff also includes 50 veterans, like retired Navy Master Chief Petty Officer Greg Mitchell.

Mitchell is a training supervisor for the call center, a position he sought to have an opportunity to give back to fellow veterans.

“The one thing I stress with my trainees is to put themselves in the shoes of the veteran,” Mitchell said. “Some of these veterans served before some of the contact reps were even born, and so it’s greatly important that we instill our new hires to have the utmost respect for the veterans in assisting them.”

New contact representatives go through three weeks of training, followed by a week of working the phones with an experienced representative as a mentor before fielding calls on their own. Mills said all the calls are recorded and spot-reviewed throughout the month to monitor how the representatives are performing.

Rod Aydelotte / Tribune-Herald

Mills said the new jobs will have a starting salary of about $24,000 and include a federal health care and benefit package. She said hiring will likely begin in February to recruit and train new staff before the renovations are complete in April.

People interested in applying for the positions should visit www.usajobs.com early next year and search for job posting, Mills said.

rdennis@wacotrib.com

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