Walgreens opens first Community specialty banner in Iowa

DEERFIELD, Ill.  — Walgreens will be opening its first specialty pharmacy in Iowa next month, according to a report in The Des Moines Register.



The 2,000 square foot pharmacy will open under the Community, A Walgreens Pharmacy banner and will cater to patients with complex medical conditions such as cancer, HIV/AIDS and transplants.



Walgreens operates about 75 community specialty pharmacies and about 175 specialty pharmacies in hospitals and clinics, according to the company. Walgreens celebrated another Community, A Walgreens Pharmacy opening last week in Baton Rouge, La.

The Community, A Walgreens Pharmacy banner is part of Walgreens’s multi-channel approach to specialty pharmacy, which Walgreens Specialty Pharmacy Group VP Gerry Gleeson outlined to Drug Store News in a recent interview.

“These locations have access to not just the broad-based specialty products that are out there in some of the large categories, but also to controlled or limited distribution products from manufacturers,” Gleeson told Drug Store News. “It’s very rare that manufacturers let some of these products out into community pharmacies, and we see now that our model is very attractive to the biopharma community to be able to again deliver complex therapies to patients in the local communities.”