RX FOR ISLAND SURVIVAL

WENDY TOTH

STONINGTON, Maine - The only pharmacy on the island of Stonington closed early last year. When customers began filling their grocery bags along with their prescriptions on the mainland, Burnt Cove Market gave them what they were missing - their medication.

Burnt Cove's owners, Vern and Sandra Seile, have operated the supermarket for 34 years, adding a gas station, fresh pizza and a general merchandise operation, which includes health and beauty care, to give island residents convenience and keep local business thriving. When theindependent pharmacy across the street closed and Rite Aid bought out its records, "people were forced to drive 20 miles one way to get their prescriptions at a Rite Aid on the mainland," Vern Seile said.

Worse, while customers were waiting at the Rite Aid to have their prescriptions filled they began buying their groceries and other needs at chain stores nearby. "We wanted to help the community by keeping a convenient prescription business in town and we also wanted to keep our grocery business in the store," Seile said.

Vern Seile was just beginning to consider a pharmacy in his store when he ran into Jack Hellmann, chief executive officer and president of CBSRx, Norwood, Mass., a consultancy for independent pharmacies, at Burnt Cove's wholesaler, Associated Grocers of Maine, Gardiner. Hellmann was pitching his company's services to Associated Grocers. "CBSRx does pharmacy projections and I needed someone to back up my gut feeling," Seile said.

CBSRx projected that it would take the new pharmacy six months to break even, and "they hit break-even numbers in six weeks," said Richard Silva, senior vice president, CBSRx.

Meanwhile, Seile went to the owner of the closed local pharmacy and made sure the projected numbers were accurate, and they were.

"As soon as the door was opened [Burnt Cove] had hundreds of prescriptions being transferred," Silva said. At an average $60 reimbursement rate per prescription, with well over 100 prescriptions a day, "that is adding nice volume to your operation," he said.

It didn't take long for island residents to pick up on the convenience of Burnt Cove's new pharmacy, according to Seile. "We advertised the pharmacy opening in October, and got a lot of support from local TV stations and newspapers, but a 50-mile round trip plus an hour or more wait to get medication is just not something you want to do when you're sick. So we got a lot of good support from the community."

Community is the key to doing business in a place like Stonington. The biggest challenge in opening the pharmacy was not building or finding space for the new pharmacy, but was finding a pharmacist licensed in Maine and willing to be a part of the town. "Maine is one of the most difficult states in which to recruit pharmacists because the closest pharmacy school is in Boston - over five hours away," Silva said.

Burnt Cove and CBSRx put together a letter, "telling a little bit about ourselves and what we were trying to do," Seile said. The letter was mailed to every pharmacist registered for the state of Maine.

It got responses from all over the country. "Mostly because the respondents all had ties to Maine or held the Maine lifestyle in high regard," Seile said.

And that is exactly what Vern and Sandra Seile wanted, someone who would move to the island and become a part of the community.

They found Doug Edinger, who had gotten his pharmacy license in Maine over 10 years before. "I'd been on vacations here and knew I wanted to retire here. Even though I'm 10 or 15 years away from that, when the opportunity became available I couldn't pass it up," Edinger said.

Edinger now enjoys working at the new pharmacy, which he pointed out has the latest NRx pharmacy management computer system by QS/1 Data Systems, Spartanburg, S.C. "Obviously, the community needed the service, and we're providing it with a very streamlined system and doing very well," Edinger said.