By Angela Mapes and Michael Schroeder
The Journal Gazette
Between dispensing medications, Paula Graden fielded questions Thursday afternoon from longtime customers who wondered why their prescription information would be sent to CVS.
“Really, a lot of them (customers) feel like CVS is the bad guy,” said Graden, pharmacy manager at Fischer Pharmacy and Home Medical in Avilla.
But the community pharmacy’s owner and president, Thomas J. Feichter, said the large drugstore chain – which he approached seeking a buyer for the drugstore’s inventory, patient lists and to salvage the jobs of his workers – has been nothing but helpful.
On Wednesday, Feichter, the owner and president, officially announced that the community pharmacy and two others like it in Albion and Garrett will close Tuesday.
All prescription patient files will be transferred to CVS locations in Kendallville and Auburn on Dec. 13 – in a manner that is fully compliant with privacy laws, Feichter said.
The 15 affected employees are being offered jobs by CVS, he said.
The pharmacy in Avilla, Fischer Pharmacy & Home Medical in Albion and Garrett Pharmacy & Home Medical in Garrett are the only drugstores in each of those towns.
But being the only game in town wasn’t enough to overcome continued pressure from mail-order drug sales, reduced insurance payments and a severe pharmacist shortage, Feichter said.
“It’s been difficult for months,” he said of wrestling with the decision to close the drugstores. Ultimately, Feichter said the pharmacies weren’t filling enough prescriptions to cover costs of doing business.
And Feichter said that was despite the fact that he was getting free rent at his Garrett drugstore – housed in the former Garrett State Bank building – and has never taken a salary on any of his pharmacy operations. He’s covered personal expenses with money earned through other business ventures.
Feitcher also owns a medical supply store in Angola and another in Warsaw that he is in the process of selling.
He didn’t disclose particulars of that deal, except to say the one employee at Brennan’s Home Medical in Warsaw will stay on under new ownership.
Feichter opened the Garrett pharmacy in late 2003, selling retail products, and after receiving necessary licensing began stocking a pharmacy line in early 2004. He bought the Albion and Avilla locations in 2000.
Avilla, with a population of about 2,400, and Albion, population 2,300, are both in Noble County. Garrett, population 5,800, is in southern DeKalb County.
Graden has worked for the Fischer pharmacies in Avilla and Kendallville for more than 30 years.
The Avilla pharmacy started in 1972 below a physician’s office, she said.
Some customers are angry about the planned closure, and others are just “really, really disappointed,” she said.
More than anything, Graden believes customers are upset because they have come to appreciate the small-town feel of the pharmacy, where many customers are greeted by name.
“It’s going to be really emotional next Tuesday,” Graden said. “We’ve become family.”
Graden learned of the closing on Saturday, but the other Avilla employees were told only late Tuesday, she said. In some ways, the writing has been on the wall for years.
“Clearly, the smaller pharmacies in the smaller towns don’t enjoy the economies of scale that the larger pharmacies enjoy,” said Zoher Shipchandler, a professor of marketing at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.
The smaller pharmacies have less buying power and see less foot traffic, Shipchandler said.
The latter is especially true in towns without a hospital, said Feichter, who owns another pharmacy in Hicksville, Ohio. With a hospital nearby, the number of prescriptions filled typically equals that of Avilla and Albion pharmacies combined, he said.
While that business remains viable, the level of competition community pharmacies face can be stifling.
“It’s kind of an attack coming from two different fronts,” Shipchandler said, referring to large pharmacy chains and big-box stores such as Wal-Mart, which recently rolled out its $4 generic prescription drug program nationwide.
A third front is mail-order drug companies, something insurance companies push clients to use to save money, he said.
In an era where large chains rule, news of the pharmacy closings had other small-business owners in Avilla worried Thursday afternoon.
“It’s just one more small store,” said Jody Nasca, an employee at the Mid-Town Market in downtown Avilla.
Customers all morning, especially elderly ones, had been buzzing about the announcement, Nasca said.
“They’re bothered that they have to go to Kendallville,” she said.
Mid-Town Market owner John Johnson, Nasca’s brother, worried that customers who go to Wal-Mart in Kendallville for their prescriptions might decide to do their grocery shopping there, too.
“It’s one-stop shopping,” he said. “You’ve got to give people a reason to stay in the town and do their shopping. That’s what I’ve tried to do here.”
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