Good Neighbor Pharmacy donations help community pharmacy thrive
Above: Lovell Award Recipient Stultz Pharmacy of Flatwoods, Ky. was recognized for its resilience after a longtime customer accidentally drove their SUV into the storefront.
LAS VEGAS — On the show floor at Good Neighbor Pharmacy’s ThoughtSpot 2015 in July, attendees had an opportunity to support their fellow community pharmacists by making a donation to the National Community Pharmacy Association Foundation’s disaster relief and pharmacy assistance fund. AmerisourceBergen leaders announced at the conference that the company pledged to match up to $50,000 for any contributions made to the foundation from July 30 through August.
“The fund has been around since 1953, and it had the purpose of helping pharmacists who need extra help at difficult times due to weather conditions, fire or flooding, or even illness,” NCPA Foundation president Sharlea Leatherwood told Drug Store News. “It's helped a lot of pharmacists. We've given a little more than $200,000 in the last few years. … It's always difficult to get funds, and when you most need them like that, sometimes it gets difficult. … We're especially interested in the matching funds that AmerisourceBergen has offered.”
At ThoughtSpot 2015, Good Neighbor Pharmacy donated an additional $5,000 to the Disaster Relief Fund on behalf of this year’s Lovell Award Recipient, Stultz Pharmacy of Flatwoods, Ky. Stultz Pharmacy was recognized for its resilience after a longtime customer accidentally drove their SUV into the storefront. Pharmacy employees got the store back up and running within hours by using two mobile registers.
Like AmerisourceBergen’s interest in supporting community pharmacists, the ties between Good Neighbor Pharmacy and the NCPA Foundation parent organization run deep. AmerisourceBergen has donated to various scholarship funds that the foundation oversees and has played a key role in establishing the Good Neighbor Pharmacy NCPA Pruitt-Schutte Student Business Plan Competition Fund.
The three finalists in the 2015 competition will present their business plans at the NCPA’s annual convention in October. The finalists are teams from the South Carolina College of Pharmacy, the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences College of Pharmacy and the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy.
Named for two former NCPA presidents who have passed away, the competition fosters interest in independent pharmacy among pharmacy students by offering prizes to the student teams with the best business plans for either opening an independent pharmacy or purchasing a community pharmacy. The top three projects win cash prizes and an equivalent donation in the pharmacy school dean’s name to support independent pharmacy.
“Since the competition started, there has been such a change in interest in pharmacy schools and in ownership,” Leatherwood said. “It used to be, when I would speak at a pharmacy school, I would always ask how many of you plan on going into community pharmacy ownership, and you'd get just one or two hands. Over the years, since that program began, I've seen an astronomical increase — almost everyone raises their hands now.”
For AmerisourceBergen, supporting initiatives that encourage up-and-coming pharmacists to get involved in independent community pharmacy and ensuring that the NCPA Foundation has the funds to support community pharmacists in their hour of need is part of a strategy outlined by AmerisourceBergen Drug Corporation President Bob Mauch.
“We are aligning our strategy to help our customers win in the marketplace. Rather than sitting in a corporate office and deciding what the AmerisourceBergen strategy should be necessarily, we’re focused on how we’re going to align our resources to help our members win,” he told Drug Store News earlier this year. “It’s exciting, because when you think about how our capabilities line up with our customer’s needs — and particularly community pharmacy customer’s needs … those are the things that we do. That’s the expertise that we have. It’s in our DNA, frankly.”