Why Pharmacy Deserts Are Detrimental to US Communities

With current industry trends leading to an unprecedented number of pharmacy shutdowns, the challenges surrounding pharmacy deserts are gradually impacting patient outcomes in communities across the US. Whether it be increased advocacy and awareness or key stakeholders enacting change in the business side of pharmacy, experts believe the trends in pharmacy deserts must be corrected to benefit patients’ access to essential services.

“It's important for us, whenever we see a problem or a disease, [that we] diagnose what's causing this problem or this disease,” said Michael Murphy, PharmD, MBA. “The reason that we're seeing pharmacy deserts close across the country is because there is a business failure in community pharmacy that's not the community pharmacies’ fault. It is because we've seen, over the past several years, a significant decline in pharmacies being able to generate revenue when they dispense medications to their patients.”

According to several experts and advocates, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) have negatively impacted pharmacy revenue, owing to the “business failure” in community pharmacy that Murphy discussed. However, despite the scrutiny pharmacy deserts have received recently, the issue is not solely based on PBM control.

“We also need policy makers at the state and federal level to pass legislation that recognizes pharmacists as providers and allows for the reimbursement of those services so that pharmacists can provide services to those patients and patients are allowed to use their health insurance to receive those services as a covered benefit,” continued Murphy.

In this week’s episode of Over the Counter, Drug Topics was joined by Murphy, who is an assistant professor of clinical pharmacy at the Ohio State University College of Pharmacy and an advisor for state government affairs at the American Pharmacists Association. He joined us to offer his insights into the growing issue of pharmacy deserts and how they affect patients. He also discussed the best ways to move forward as a country from his perspective as a pharmacist.

Stay tuned for weekly podcast episodes on Over the Counter every Thursday afternoon. Check out our previous episode with Michael Kleinrock, lead research director at the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science. He joined us to discuss the importance of his company’s report, Understanding the Use of Medicines in the US 2025.

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