ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, November 9, 1996 TAG: 9611110101
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG
SOURCE: MARK CLOTHIER STAFF WRITER
As of Nov. 18, customers of downtown's Corner Drug store will get their prescriptions filled somewhere else.
The downtown institution is closing shop, transferring its prescription accounts and merchandise to the Revco Drug Store, 210 Prices Fork Road, Blacksburg.
Phillip Hurst, the Bluefield, Va., pharmacist and businessman who has owned the Corner Drug store since June 1995, said the shop fell victim to economic conditions: rising drug costs and falling profits.
Hurst said the Prices Fork Revco location will offer the features the Corner Drug store is known for: home prescription delivery for elderly customers and Charles Vaughn, the pharmacist who has worked at the Corner Drug Store for 31 years.
Blacksburg Town Manager Ron Secrist said the Corner Drug Store will be missed.
"In this kind of big-box-national-franchise environment, it is very difficult for locally owned retailers to make ends meet," he said. "I feel for them and I feel for the customers. I really do."
Hurst said retaining his staff - who will be employed by Revco in the New River Valley - and the delivery service were key parts of the Revco negotiations.
"I tried to make sure our customers got the best available service out there," he said. "Very few chains deliver and a lot of our patients depend on that on a day-to-day basis. I see very little change as far as patient service goes, it's just the physical plant that's changing."
Hurst said one of the biggest problems he has faced is an inability to compete with mail-order prescription houses and health maintenance organizations who get their drugs from the pharmaceutical companies cheaper than he can, forcing him to cut his profit to stay competitive.
For example, Hurst said, he pays about $8 for a preventive inhaler that he'll have to sell at or near cost to keep up with a mail order house that can buy it for $2.
Industry analysts estimate the pharmacy industry is losing 8,000 independent pharmacists a year.
"This is not an act if desperation," Hurst said. "I feel this is basically a fact of life in the retail drug business. I hate that we're going out of business but I'm happy we're able to merge with Revco."
Hurst said he's one of 4,000 independent druggists who have filed suit against the major pharmaceutical companies to level the playing field.
A $351 million settlement between tens of thousands of retail pharmacists and 11 drug manufacturers was approved in June by a U.S. District Court judge in Chicago.
That class-action suit accused the pharmaceutical companies of conspiring to illegally deny the retail pharmacy chains the deep discounts they offer HMOs, hospitals and mail-order retailers.
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: LISA GARCIA\Staff. Corner Drug in downtown Blacksburgby CNBsoon will be closing its doors. color.