CVS has plans to change its familiar piano on-hold music, much to the delight of one Harvard psychiatrist, whose thoughts on the issue went viral last year, WBUR reports.
Steven Schlozman, MD, a psychiatrist at Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital, said he typically calls CVS at least three times a day to call in his patients' prescriptions and spends roughly a minute and half listening to the company's piano hold music each time.
"When I did the numbers, that worked out to 25 days of my life on this planet, and that's too much for any one tune to be listened to," he told WBUR.
Last May, Dr. Schlozman wrote an op-ed for WBUR calling on CVS to change its music, and the article went viral.
"The feedback I got [after writing the op-ed] was universally positive. People were like, 'This is funny but you have a good point. It's time for this music to change,'" he said.
A CVS spokesperson told WBUR the company has plans in place to change its music, but said the move was not because of Dr. Schlozman's op-ed.
"CVS Pharmacy is in the process of updating the interactive voice response phone system in our stores, including the on-hold music. We expect this work to be completed later in 2019," the spokesperson said, adding that "plans were already under way to enhance the phone system, and the music is only one element of the system."
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