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US Pharm. 2011;36(8):4.
What do sushi, pharmacy, and vending
machines have in common? Well, quite a lot actually. Last month Duane
Reade, a popular drug-store chain in New York City owned by Walgreens,
announced that it was opening its largest new store on Wall Street.
According to an article in a New York Times blog (July 5th),
the new store is “the most exciting drugstore in the world.” The
new Wall Street location features a grocery market with sushi and smoothie
bars, a hair salon for shampoos, blow-dries and blowouts, and a nail
bar for manicures and massages. This follows on the heels of a beer
bar in another Duane Reade store.
When I first heard about the beer bar,
I was surprised. When I heard of the sushi bar, hair salon, and nail
bar, I was appalled. Then I started rationalizing that while it might
be a stretch, a beer bar in a pharmacy could be thought of as a modern-day
soda fountain, which was a fixture in many original retail pharmacies
decades ago. But I had a more difficult time coming to terms with eating
sushi and having your hair and nails done in a pharmacy. After giving
it some thought, I asked myself, “Would people come into the store
for these services if it did not have a pharmacy to attract them?”
In today's anemic economy, why go through
the expense of hiring pharmacists, technicians, and other pharmacy personnel
and maintaining expensive inventory in a separate pharmacy department?
Does Duane Reade really need a pharmacy to be successful? I submit to
you that indeed it does. I contend that the image of a pharmacist and
a pharmacy department cannot be diluted by exotic foods or other nonessential
services like hair and nail salons and beer bars. If that were the case,
there would be no successful supermarket pharmacies or pharmacies in
big box stores. People will still view Duane Reade as a pharmacy; the
other stuff is only window dressing. As with the old soda fountain,
I think pharmacy can continue to coexist comfortably with noncompatible
businesses under one roof.
But a development described in The
Seattle Times does have me concerned, and it is probably more alien
to the profession of pharmacy than sushi bars and hair salons. The article
reported that a vending machine has replaced a pharmacist at a medical
clinic in Sacramento, California. While the prescription medications
stocked in this machine are very limited, the image and perception of
pharmacy that it “dispenses” are very disheartening, to say the
least. As you would expect, the company that manufactures the vending
machine defends its use as a time-saving mechanism to avoid delays in
getting prescriptions filled, but speaks nothing of the potential life-saving
value of a pharmacist in dispensing prescriptions. Simply said, there
is no place in the profession of pharmacy for vending machines as replacements
for pharmacists. Although new technology behind the prescription counter
is essential for pharmacists to fill prescriptions accurately,
there is simply no substitute for face-to-face consultations when
dispensing medications. While vending machines have no place in
pharmacy, they may be of value in dispensing sushi.
To comment on this article, contact
editor@uspharmacist.com
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