Nearly One-Third of U.S. Pharmacies Have Closed Since 2010

If you've had a problem filling a prescription lately, this might be the reason. There's been some bad news in the world of pharmacies of late. According to a new study from researchers at the University of Southern California and the University of California's Berkeley School of Public Health, nearly one-third of all retail pharmacies in the U.S. have closed since 2010.

The "unprecedented decline" in neighborhood pharmacies across the country makes it more difficult for many people to fill prescriptions, receive vaccinations, and access basic health care services. The researchers also suggest that the closures are likely to disproportionately affect vulnerable communities.

Find out why the trend is happening, what the impact is, and what can be done about it.

The trend was for more pharmacies to open than close in the 2010s. But between 2018 and 2021, the number of pharmacies declined in a whopping 41 states, according to the study, which was first published Dec. 3 in the journal Health Affairs.

“At the same time many states are making efforts to expand the scope of pharmacy services beyond dispensing drugs to include the provision of preventive and emergency care, we found that there are — for the first time for at least a decade — fewer pharmacies available to provide them,” said senior author Dima Mazen Qato, a senior scholar at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics and the Hygeia Centennial Chair and associate professor at the USC Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Seven states have had the most pharmacy closures, according to U.S. News and World Report: Illinois, Maine, Mississippi, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont. And this wasn't a few closures. These states saw a net decline of more than half of all pharmacies in some counties.

Disproportionately Black and Latino communities were affected. Pharmacy closure rates in largely Black (37.5%) and Latino (35.6%) neighborhoods were higher as compared to ones in predominantly white neighborhoods (27.7%).

The UC Berkeley researchers suggested that the merger of larger pharmacy chains with dominant pharmacy benefit managers, which “negotiate prescription drug benefits and steer patients to preferred pharmacies" may be causing at least part of the problem.

Go ahead, reach out to your government representatives. Pressuring politicians to have independent pharmacies included in preferred benefit networks, instead of allowing larger chains to dictate how things work, can be a way to stop the healthcare drain.

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