Pharmacy shifts focus to compounding, home medical business

ST. ALBANS, W.Va. (AP) - After more than 30 years in St. Albans, Loop Pharmacy and Home Medical is changing the way it does business.

The pharmacy, located on Sixth Avenue, has sold the retail pharmacy portion of its business to CVS. It will continue the compounding pharmacy and home medical operations, owner Bill McFarland said Thursday.

Compounding, or preparing customized medicines for patients, is “designing or creating something unique to that patient that standard medications are not working to do,” McFarland said. “That’s a profession in itself to me.”

The pharmacy opened nearly 33 years ago in October 1984. The business started with retail pharmacy and expanded to compounding, he said.

McFarland said the change will also allow for a “more robust” home medical section with more products.

“This is going to become a compounding pharmacy with nutritional support, which means we’ll have vitamins, nutrients, herbal products,” he said. “You’ll see my shelves begin to fill up with that sort of thing.”

McFarland said he decided to drop the retail pharmacy because problems associated with insurance reimbursements with the standard pharmacy business were becoming too overwhelming.

Having only the compounding portion of the pharmacy will give him “more freedom to serve the patients’ unique needs of medications,” McFarland said.

The six pharmacy staff members associated with the retail pharmacy have all found other work or decided to stay home with their kids for the summer, McFarland said. McFarland’s former partner pharmacist, Erin Rudge, has taken a job with CVS, where she’s helping with the transition from that side, he said.

“Which has made it somewhat sweeter for the people,” McFarland said.

On Thursday, much of the store’s shelves stood empty as customers milled in and out and staff members worked. Red signs on the business’s two outside doors alerted retail pharmacy customers that their prescriptions had been transferred to CVS Pharmacy.

McFarland said customers’ prescriptions should have flowed seamlessly to CVS and customers should have no obstacles to getting them there.

Wilma Paul, of St. Albans, stopped by the business last Thursday morning to ask about getting diabetic testing supplies there. Paul said she found out about the changes to the pharmacy from her son, who went to fill a prescription and found out it was to be filled at CVS instead. Paul said she’s been coming to the pharmacy since it opened.

Another customer, Vickie Godbey, of St. Albans, said she’ll continue to come for compound prescriptions. She likes the pharmacy because it’s close to where she lives and the people there are nice.

“It’s just a change he said he had to make,” Godbey said.

McFarland said overall, reactions from customers have been mixed.

“People are happy for me, they understand this is going to be less stressful for this person,” he said. “They’re sad - we have relationships, (people) that have been coming to this pharmacy for 33 years. So we’re sad for that because we’ve done a really good job of taking care of people, obviously.”