Family Pharmacy store sticks with service strategy

“It all boils down to putting yourself in the customer’s situation,” said Tori Rathert, assistant manager of the pharmacy, located inside Summer Fresh Supermarket, 220 W. Plainview Road. “I have a lot of situations where I ask myself what I’d do if it was my mother or my grandmother. I would want somebody to take the time to help them out.”

And even though the Plainview Road location is one of 24 pharmacies in the chain started by Lynn Morris in 1977, working there is different from working for a large national chain, said Bill Tilley, pharmacist and store manager.

“Every week on our way home we will drop medicine off for our patients,” Tilley said. “We have spent 30 to 40 minutes on the phone trying to straighten out an insurance problem. Some of the bigger chains just won’t or don’t have time to do something like that.”

Sales at the Plainview Road pharmacy grew 19 percent between 2005 and 2006, according to Dalene Treadwell, Family Pharmacy’s director of office personnel, though she declined to disclose actual revenues.

People first

Other than staff members such as Tilley and Rathert – who was named Employee of the Year for the chain two years ago – Morris said the Plainview Road store is very similar to the others he owns. Family Pharmacy has about 250 employees in all of its stores, with eight of them at the Plainview Road location. Morris noted that in the pharmacy business, it’s the people who make all the difference.

One example of Family Pharmacy’s people-first mentality is its response to recent changes to Medicare Part D.

Instead of taking an opportunity to push its own prescription drug plans, Family Pharmacy went into overdrive to find the best plans and deals for its customers.

“We wound up spending a lot of time on the phone,” Tilley said. “We would make a profile on each patient, and the ladies back at our office would go through that and find the best three plans for every patient.”

Family Pharmacy also floated the cost of prescriptions for months while customers waited for their insurance cards or approval from their insurance companies.

“We had about 150 to 200 prescriptions that were rejected,” Morris said. “There was not one person in our group of about 20 stores that didn’t get their medicine. We went ahead and made a decision quickly to give everyone their medicine and then fight the insurance companies later.

“We really got it done and people never realized how messed up the program was,” he added.

In the aftermath, Morris is still struggling with slow payments from Medicare Part D insurers.

For the first time in its history, Family Pharmacy has problems with cash flow and has even borrowed money to smooth things out.

“I don’t know of any other business that could offer a product or service three or four times without getting paid,” Morris said.

“It’s still a nightmare for all of the pharmacies dealing with Medicare Part D. We have no way of knowing when these insurance companies are going to cut a check, so to try and budget or forecast or plan how to pay your bills is extremely hard,” he added.

Regional growth

Medicare problems aside, Morris said the last few years have been a time of growth for Family Pharmacy, though he added that the biggest limitation is in finding a good, local pharmacist in the small communities he wants to serve.

Although Morris’ original plan was to stick with serving the small communities around Springfield, he jumped at the chance to open the Plainview Road location, namely because he admires Summer Fresh President David Trottier.

“His values and my values, as far as cleanliness and customer service, fit right in,” Morris said. “We are glad to be part of the store.”

Going forward, Morris has more stores planned and a $1.6 million software upgrade in place, which will share customer prescriptions throughout the chain, allowing for refills at any Family Pharmacy location.

That convenience is a step that Morris sees as necessary to compete with larger pharmacy chains. [[In-content Ad]]