ST. JOHNSBURY – On Wednesday, Feb. 18, Senator Peter Welch (D-Vt.) joined Northeast Kingdom health care providers and community leaders at Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital (NVRH) for a roundtable discussion on the importance of rural and independent pharmacies, and a celebration of federal funding to help build new pharmacies in Caledonia County.
Attending the meeting with Welch were NVRH CEO Shawn Tester; retiring executive director of the NEK Council of Aging Meg Burmeister, along with new Executive Director Darryl Washington; Northern Counties Health Care CEO Chris Towne; and Barb Byrne, clinical care coordinator at NVRH Corner Medical.
Senator Welch recently secured $1.4 million funding through the Congressionally Directed Spending (CDS) process for NVRH to construct new pharmacies in Caledonia County to address the recent loss of pharmacies throughout the Northeast Kingdom. The shuttering of the downtown Walgreen’s store in St. Johnsbury left the town with only one remaining pharmacy and the more recent closure of Walgreen’s in Hardwick has created a pharmacy desert.
“The Hardwick community has been without a pharmacy for quite some time,” said Northern Counties Health Care CEO Chris Towne. “The closest pharmacy is Morrisville, which is 25 or so minutes away. We have staff who are driving to the pharmacy on a regular basis to pick up prescriptions for patients. If they don’t, it means that they go without the prescriptions.”
Burmeister and Byrne both spoke to the real struggles that their patients face accessing and paying for medications. For people living in Hardwick or St. Johnsbury who may already have transportation and financial challenges, said Burmeister, the pharmacy closures impact existing struggles to get the medications and support that they need. “It quadruples what people are struggling with.”
“The pharmacy closures in St. Johnsbury sent a shockwave through our community,” Tester said. “People were struggling to get their scripts filled on time, which meant they were canceling their surgeries. When the Hardwick pharmacy closed as well, we said, ‘OK this isn’t just the St. Johnsbury problem—this is a Northeast Kingdom problem. How do we leverage the relationship and the support we have through our Senator to meet these needs?’ These funds are going to help solve this problem for our communities and I’m so excited and grateful about that.”
Pharmacies and pharmacists are critical components of in-person delivery of care and advice to people at a moment when they’re very vulnerable, Welch explained.
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“You have to have access to pharmacies in your community, not just the prescriptions, but the medical advice that you need. That’s why this congressionally directed spending, in response to the leadership of Shawn and Chris, is so important.”
Both Towne and Tester expressed eagerness to work together to tackle the challenge of ensuring that residents have access to pharmacies convenient to their home and work.
“We’re appreciative and excited to work with you to utilize these funds to address the pharmacy desert situation in the Hardwick community,” said Towne. “We have our work cut out for us, but we’re committed to improving access to pharmacy services for our patients.”
NVRH has not yet determined specific sites for the pharmacies and will share details as planning moves forward. But despite the challenges, optimism prevailed.
“We’re not going to give up on the people here,” said Welch. “We’re not going to give up on doing all we can to make certain that access to a pharmacy is right here in the Kingdom, so that folks here who are working hard and need some medical care can get the care they need.”
