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South Coast Short On 24-Hour Pharmacies
It’s midnight, and your 6-year-old son is coughing so much he can’t sleep, so neither can you.
After an extra long day at the office, dinner and homework, you ran short on time to retrieve the refill of the prescription cough medicine your son’s pediatrician called in.
And the pharmacy has been closed since 10 p.m.
In fact, there isn’t a single chain or local pharmacy from Goleta to Carpinteria open after 10 p.m. Most of the area’s pharmacies close from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. weekdays. Want 24-hour access to prescription medicine? You’ll have to drive to Ventura or Santa Maria, each of which has at least one pharmacy open 24/7.
Is there enough demand for overnight prescription medicine to justify an all-night pharmacy?
Dr. Paul Aijian, a Santa Barbara physician who specializes in geriatric and internal medicine, said he and his patients certainly would patronize a pharmacy that offered longer hours.
“Many times over the years on night and weekend call, I have gotten calls from patients who need a medicine called in for them, but they called after all the local pharmacies have closed,” Aijian said. “Most of the pharmacies have similar hours of closing, and it seems like over the years, the night and weekend hours have gotten ever shorter.”
On the South Coast, the two pharmacies open the latest are both in Goleta: the CVS Pharmacy at 189 S. Turnpike Road in the Vons shopping center, and the Walgreens drug store at 5900 Calle Real. Both have pharmacies that remain open until 10 p.m. Monday through Friday.
In addition to the CVS and Walgreens pharmacies being open until 10 p.m. weekdays, the Rite-Aid pharmacy in the Fairview Shopping Center opens for business at 6 a.m. seven days a week, according to the Rite-Aid Web site.
Robert Elfinger, Illinois-based spokesman for Walgreens, said the Calle Real Walgreens simply doesn’t have enough demand for prescriptions to warrant it staying open 24 hours. As a result, Walgreens officials believe that Santa Barbara or Goleta “would not be a good place to have a 24-hour store,” he said.
Higher-volume pharmacies, such the next closest Walgreens, in Onxard, see more requests, Elfinger said, and thus have pharmacy staff working overnight to fill prescription requests from the prior day.
CVS Caremark, based in Woonsocket, R.I., purchased Longs Drugs Stores in August 2008. Some of the local stores still operate as Longs; others are now known as CVS facilities.
Calls to the CVS toll-free general information line are routed back to local stores based on the caller’s area code and prefix; the store to which a Noozhawk reporter was referred is the one at 3939 State St., in the Five Points Shopping Center. That facility, still operated as a Longs, is open 24 hours a day, but its pharmacy closes at 9 p.m. Monday through Friday and 6 p.m. on weekends.
Mike DeAngelis, CVS/pharmacy director of public relations, said the company continues “to monitor the market.”
“As in any of our markets, we expand hours when we determine that there is enough of a customer base to support a 24-hour pharmacy,” he said.
Aijian said he has tried to get the local owner of a drug store to expand operating hours to accommodate late-night requests for medicine. “I suggested to the owner of Federal Drug that he might have a niche” if, as a locally owned pharmacy, he offered later hours, Aijian said. He suggested that the owner offer late-night service as a benefit to regular customers, and “offer a prescription refill for a fee, which would make it worth his while to drive down there and fill the prescription.”
At the Federal Drug Company, 3327 State St., an employee said there’s simply not enough demand for prescriptions to warrant the business offering later hours.
Aijian said he understands that pharmacists and employees don’t want to work into the evening hours — or overnight — on the chance that a few patients will need medicine. “The problem is that no one wants to be up late, especially when the rare prescription is not that profitable,’’ he said.
A state shortage of available pharmacists contributes to the South Coast’s lack of late-night drug stores, one local pharmacist said.
Allan Cohen, director of pharmacy services for Cottage Health System, said Santa Barbara and Goleta pharmacies have a difficult time getting pharmacists to staff their facilities during regular hours, “let alone the night shift,” but agreed that the region could use a 24-hour pharmacy.
Cohen has heard of longtime area pharmacists who are seeking to retire being urged by their employers to keep working simply because there’s no one available to replace them, Cohen said.
As a member of a statewide task force studying the number of professionals working in the health care field, Cohen has learned that California has the lowest number of pharmacists per 100,000 people of any state in the nation.
The task force, the Coalition on Shortages of Allied Health Professionals, is working under the direction of the California Hospital Association, he said.
At the heart of the issue, Cohen said, is encouraging more pharmacists to come to the Central Coast. Members of the task force, who will present their findings to the governor, have found that shortages in educational facilities and sites at which new graduates can train are factors that lead to the overall lack of pharmacists.
Patients being treated for an injury or illness in the facilities’ emergency departments have access to prescriptions via the pharmacies at the Goleta, Santa Barbara and Solvang hospitals operated by Cottage Health System. The hospitals will not, however, fill prescriptions for patients not seen by emergency room physicians, Cohen said. “By law, we cannot fill nonpatient prescriptions,” he said.
Sansum Clinic, another major provider of health care for Santa Barbara County residents, operates two pharmacies, one at its Hitchcock Way site, and the other at its main clinic, 215 Pesetas Lane, said Paul Jaconette, Sansum’s chief administrative officer. The company leases its pharmacy facility at 317 W. Pueblo St. to another pharmacist, he added.
Sansum’s two pharmacies are nonprofit operations and not retail facilities such as Rite-Aid, Walgreens or CVS, Jaconette said. “As a nonprofit, we buy at nonprofit rates,” he said.
Jaconette said he hasn’t heard from Sansum physicians that the lack of a 24-hour pharmacy hinders patient care. “For some patients, yes, I imagine there might be a need,” he said, “but typically, things can wait until the next morning.’’
The executive director of Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinics, which operates medical centers on the Eastside, Westside and in Isla Vista, as well as a dental clinic, said her medical staff members haven’t reported any difficulties with patients getting prescriptions filled at local pharmacies.
“Most of our patients are below the poverty level, and have MediCal or other governmental coverage for their meds,” Cynder Sinclair said. “They are very familiar with which pharmacies accept their coverages and what the hours are.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Laurie Jervis can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Comments
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» on 07.11.09 @ 03:07 AM
Useful information and a good reminder about another aspect of the limits to health care in our area, one that is being constricted as chains take over what used to be small businesses. I think the local pharmacy situation reinforces the need to be self-aware and to take as much care as possible of our own bodies,but there always will be unexpected and unpredictable attacks on one’s health. That said, except for Dr. Aijian’s comments, the tone of the piece comes across as “there is no real problem here.” I respect the obvious effort that went into this story but I wonder if we’re missing an element that might have shed more light on the reality: What volume of emergency calls (9-1-1, fire and ambulance, ER visits) are due to people who need vital medicines and have run out? While this information might not be collected in one place, I would’ve thought that the county Public Health Dept. could have been a good beginning. Perhaps a Grand Jury looked at this part of health care in one of its reports—or perhaps the reporter tried such sources and came up dry. It happens. Thanks for what was attempted as much as for the information shared.
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» on 07.11.09 @ 10:49 AM
Good points but one must rely on your mental programing. If you have a prescription that is running out, get it refilled before that time. If it is after 10pm and it can’t wait until 6am, then it is probably an emergency and should go to the hospital.
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» on 07.11.09 @ 12:34 PM
Isn’t the Walgreens store in the Calle Real Market open 24 hours? It was a few years ago, but maybe that has changed…
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» on 07.11.09 @ 09:58 PM
Many times patients call at night with a new problem that is urgent, however not an actual emergency. When you can reach your doctor, and your doctor is unable to get a prescription filled on your behalf, it becomes an emergency. This is not a good use of the Hospital Emergency Department. Doctors are on call in order to take care of these urgent problems without resorting to the use of the Emergency Department. The pharmacy is the missing piece after hours. The cost of medicine is driven up without this. A simple bladder infection ends up costing $800 instead of $25.
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» on 07.12.09 @ 12:00 PM
It"s a demographic thing. In suburban Philadelphia there
are six 24 hour pharmacies within a 10 mile radius. And
they are thriving. This Santa Barbara area should have at least one 24 hour pharmacy available to the public.
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» on 07.12.09 @ 11:50 PM
Longs is better then Cvs , Cvs does not check at all for expired Items in one way its a repeat of another Rite Aid when , why Rite Aid got sued by a customer over a expired over the counter Rx Item.
I have a Tribute Video to Longs.
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» on 07.13.09 @ 11:57 AM
Anyone who’s ever had a sick child wake up in the middle of the night wishes we had a 24-hour pharmacy.
But reality is that prescription volumes must be high enough, daily for 50 weeks a year, to cover the costs of a licensed, trained Pharamacist working, and the drug store staying “open”. They’re not.
Unlike LA or Philadelphia, we only have 200,000 people on the south coast. It
doesn’t pencil out.
People have from 7AM to 10PM to ensure that their meds will last through the night. That’s not unreasonable.
To get a new prescription at 2AM also means a doctor working at 2AM to write one. That means Cottage’s splendid ERs, which do have pharmacies. Their high per-pill
billing reflects their fully allocate cost of staying open 24@day ... which is why no
one does it.
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» on 09.10.09 @ 06:02 AM
My son is a student at UCSB. He has been a diabetic since the age of 5. There is no pharmacy that provides 24 hour service for him to obtain insulin after hours. He must go to the hospital emergency room.
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