SMALL PHARMACIES, IN ON THE ACT

November 17, 1999
		Independent pharmacies are joining the world of e-commerce and using every advantage they have to try to maintain their place in the ever-looming world of drugstore chains. The Health Unit is a partnership with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

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	Finding a niche, and succeeding
	In a market where the large drugstore chains have forced out many neighborhood pharmacies in the last decade, Todd Dankmyer of the National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) says most of the remaining small, independent drugstores will be able to hold their own through the Internet age. "The decline [of small community pharmacies] seems to have plateaued," he says, noting that only 100 stores closed in 1998 while around 1,500 had closed every year since 1990. Dankmyer says that the remaining stores are likely to stick around, and that the Internet may even help them do that in to the future. According to Dankmyer, the stores that have succeeded have developed their own niches in a highly competitive market where the larger chains can have much lower prices. The smaller stores can develop a customer base by catering to homecare, hospice or alternative medicines. Dillon says the secret to his success has been medical equipment and filling more complicated prescriptions. "Will they deliver an electric wheelchair?" he asks proudly. "You can get amoxicillin anywhere, but what we're into are serious medical problems." Jeanette Partilla, his business partner, manages the sale and rental of medical equipment. "I don't think you can survive on just being a pharmacy anymore," she said. "The pharmacy brings people in, but the medical equipment keeps the pharmacy going." "We provide very good service. For a blood glucose monitor, we'll train them, we'll go to the patient's home," she adds. Partilla and Dillon pride themselves on being flexible and aware of the market. "As soon as we hear something new is happening, we say, ok, let's do it," Partilla says. But Dillon says they are careful not to try to beat the chains at their own game because they say the independent pharmacies that have tried, have failed. "We can't sell toothpaste as cheap as they can, but we offer diabetic screenings, blood glucose monitors, hypertension screening," Dillon says. "We can e-mail personal histories with charts and graphs. CVS can't do that any better than we can."
	A tool to compete
	Smaller pharmacies often show more flexibility when serving their customers. For example, if a customer is having trouble swallowing, a pharmacist at Grubbs will make a lollipop, or put the medicine in suppository, cream or gel form. Michael Kim, a compounding specialist for Grubbs, says he often gets calls from the pharmacists in chains asking how to fill an order, and then ends up filling it himself because it is too complicated. As e-pharmacies begin to pop up, Partilla and Dillon are prepared to join that trend too. A new Web site called CornerDrugstore.com, that caters to independent pharmacies around the country, was recently endorsed by the NCPA. Dillon plans on using the new service and thinks his customers will too. "Instead of sending [a prescription] to some faceless factory, they know me," he says. Dankmyer, of the NCPA, hopes community pharmacies will join CornerDrugstore.com "as a defense strategy to protect their client base," and give their customers the option to order online. Since its inception CornerDrugstore.com has indeed been met with enthusiasm from pharmacies. More than 2,500 pharmacies, out of 25,000 community pharmacies in the United States, have become part of the network. "Our goal is to have one pharmacy in every community in America," said Brett Johnson, the CEO of CornerDrugstore.com, "and we have been met with a tremendous amount of enthusiasm, excitement and hope." Each drugstore will have their own page that they can control and will receive orders for same day delivery, a service Grubbs already performs all around the city. "We'd like to think that we'll give them the tools to compete with the big guys," Johnson says.