A locally-owned pharmacy in Maumelle is closing down, and its owner blames the middle-men who have turned the industry upside-down.
Bradley’s Healthmart Pharmacy has sold its prescription business to Walgreen's. The signs came off the side of the building Tuesday morning, and the store changed its name.
“It’s just Bradley’s Gifts now,” its owner, Brent Bradley said, “because we have quite a bit of gift inventory that we need to sell off over the next month, month and a half.”
Bradley stopped filling prescriptions last Thursday and announced the change on Facebook. He said his pharmacy collapsed under the weight of pressure caused by pharmacy benefit managers, the companies that negotiate how much insurance companies will pay for prescriptions. The last year and a half, many independent pharmacists say PBMs have taken all of their potential profits and then some.
“And that’s hard to stay in business whenever you’re actually paying people, basically, to give them their prescription to walk out the door,” Bradley said.
Arkansas became the first state in the country to regulate PBMs when Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed a bill in March 2018 granting the Arkansas Insurance Department the authority to license only those companies that promise to use fair reimbursement rates.
Attorney General Leslie Rutledge opened an investigation of CVS Caremark because of numerous complaints about its reimbursement practices.
Bradley said he believed those are the proper steps to take to help independent pharmacists. “But that’s just a little too late for that, for me to survive, anyway,” he added.
Without prescriptions to pick up, many people entered Bradley’s Gifts on Tuesday looking for conversation and consolation.
“A lot of tears, and a lot of support,” Bradley noted, “and quite a few customers coming through.”
Bradley moved to Maumelle in 1991 and bought his first pharmacy in 1994. Stories flowed freely as longtime customers chatted with him.
“Back in the 90’s,” he recalled, “my delivery guy—he was, like, 83 years old—he went and made a delivery up the high-rise, and a lady was having a grease fire, and he was banging out the grease fire. And then he comes back with a hat on and it’s smoking!” Bradley laughed as he pointed to the wall above him, upon which the burnt hat was proudly displayed.
Bradley said some independent pharmacies will be able to survive if they sell gifts and compound their own drugs. His pharmacy did some compounding, he said, but not enough to be sustainable.
Bradley Healthmart Pharmacy is not the first independent pharmacy to blame PBMs for its closure, and its owner fears it will not be the last.
“Unless something is done,” he stated, “that’s going to be kind of the, probably, the trend.”
Bradley plans to work at the Walgreen’s he sold to, which is approximately half a mile away. Bradley’s Gifts will remain open until the end of June or until the remaining inventory sells.
“You know, change is hard,” Bradley said. “But we’re all going to make this work.”