The following article was originally published in the Ohio Capital Journal and published on News5Cleveland.com under a content-sharing agreement.
Several signs indicate that pharmacy chain Rite Aid will close more than 300 pharmacies in Ohio and Michigan in the coming weeks. Walgreens is likely to buy the stores’ prescription files — meaning that Rite Aid patients will now have to go to the nearest Walgreens unless they make some other arrangement.
The news is especially concerning because many Rite Aid stores are in small communities and their closure will deprive some residents of what had been their most common point of access to a health professional.
Philadelphia-based Rite Aid is restructuring and on Monday, it filed a pleading with a U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New Jersey saying that it planned to close 27 stores in the two states. However, Rite Aid, Walgreens, and its restructuring agent, Kroll Inc., haven’t spoken publicly about further closings.
Even so, Rite Aid on Monday held a conference call with its Michigan and Ohio pharmacists and told them it would close all but a tiny number of its stores in a series of waves over the coming weeks.
The number of such closures would be relatively huge. Rite Aid has about 142 pharmacies in Ohio — a state with about 2,100 pharmacies. The Rite Aid website says it has 185 stores in Michigan, a state with about 1.6 million fewer residents than Ohio.
Among the questions the interested businesses haven’t answered is whether such sweeping closures will hit the 14 other states in which Rite Aid currently operates: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Idaho, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.
The Village Reporter in Montpelier, Ohio, on Tuesday first reported on the call with pharmacists, citing unnamed Rite Aid employees.
On Thursday, a Rite Aid pharmacist in Ohio confirmed the call to the Capital Journal. He asked not to be named because pharmacists were warned not to talk to the media and many hope for jobs with Walgreens as those pharmacies’ business expands.
“They had a conference call on Monday and they let us know that the corporation made the decision to close the stores in Ohio and Michigan,” the pharmacist said. “There are a few exceptions, a onesie, twosie here and there. They’re asking us to work the rest of the days until our stores close.”
In addition to those confirmations, Bled Tanoe, an Oklahoma-based pharmacist who advocates for safer working conditions, on Monday took to Facebook to post a sheet of talking points under the Walgreens letterhead. Tanoe didn’t immediately respond to a message asking where the document came from.
“Beginning in late June, pharmacy patient prescription files and related inventory from nearly all Rite Aid locations in Michigan and Ohio will automatically transfer to a nearby Walgreens,” the document said. “Rite Aid pharmacies will close in waves and transfers will occur the morning after a location has its last day of business.”
The document doesn’t specify how close a Walgreens has to be to a closing Rite Aid to be “nearby.” And since Rite Aid has a big presence in small communities, those distances can be pretty big.
Reimbursement practices and a difficult retail environment have already led to a large number of closures in small or distressed communities, creating pharmacy deserts. Such deserts are particularly hard on the sick, poor and elderly, who are more likely to face transportation challenges.
The Rite Aid pharmacist who spoke to the Capital Journal said the closures “without a doubt” would create more problems for the most vulnerable to access pharmacy care.
“Some of the Rite Aid locations are in areas where there are not a lot of competitors or other options,” he said.
The document under Walgreens letterhead also said, “To help ensure a smooth transition, former Rite Aid pharmacy customers will receive a letter in the mail notifying them of this change and providing them with information about their new Walgreens pharmacy.”
Yet it’s not clear why the companies involved aren’t talking publicly about the closures so customers can plan. Among the questions Walgreens didn’t respond to: Were the companies delaying an announcement so that Rite Aid customers would have less time to find an alternative to Walgreens, thus making the Rite Aid files it purchased more valuable?
The pharmacist who spoke to the Capital Journal and others with knowledge of the planning said that Rite Aid and Walgreens were trying to manage the closures in a way that maintains good patient service throughout the process.
Pharmacy giant CVS earlier this year settled claims levied against it by the Ohio Board of Pharmacy. They were related to critical understaffing after CVS bought and closed competitors as well as its own stores and then failed to adequately staff the pharmacies where it moved prescriptions.
The pharmacy board subsequently adopted rules that would, among other things, fine pharmacies for not timely filling prescriptions.
Moving scripts from the closing Rite Aid stores to the nearest Walgreens might also land Walgreens in hot water with newly active antitrust authorities. In 2017, the companies abandoned a proposed merger as the Federal Trade Commission was in talks with the companies about what assets they’d have to sell off in order to maintain a healthy marketplace.
