5 Questions With a Pharmacist: Lea Wolsoncroft from Remedies Pharmacy

Lea Wolsoncroft, RPh, MS, is currently the president of the National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA). But when she’s not advocating for the cause of millions of independent pharmacists in the US, she works as the head pharmacist of Remedies Pharmacy in Hoover, Alabama. From everyday pharmacy duties to veteran experience in compounding, learn about Wolsoncroft’s time in the community pharmacy space.

She started her pharmacy career at Samford University and received her master’s in pharmacy from the University of Maryland. After getting both institutional and independent experience within pharmacy, Wolsoncroft expanded her scope within the profession and has been an active board member with the Alabama Pharmacy Association. Since finding a passion for community pharmacy as an undergrad, she has since made her way to becoming the sitting president of the NCPA.

Wolsoncroft has extensive experience in animal compounding. | image credit: Lea Wolsoncroft

Read about the inner workings of Remedies Pharmacy in this week’s installment of 5 Questions With a Pharmacist.

Drug Topics: What is one of the biggest challenges you face in today’s pharmacy industry?

Fair payment. Over the last few decades, there are companies that have slowly eroded the payment to pharmacies while they also have increased the cost to employers, thus increasing the spread in between which they keep for themselves. These middlemen are the [pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs)] and they have no oversight. They are greedy and out of control. Pharmacies are only asking for fair reimbursement and they [have been] totally uncooperative.

Drug Topics: What are some things your pharmacy does to make the community feel welcomed?

We often will have curbside pick-up for our customers that have a pet that they are taking for a ride-along. You can call/text us and we will let them know when the prescription is ready for pick-up. Drive up and we will come out to you with your package, your change, or a mobile credit card device, and off you go along with a pet treat.

Drug Topics: Your pharmacy specializes in compounding medications for pets. Have you seen an observable impact since you began offering this to your community?

We have local vets that send their patients to us and neighbors who want to support us, and these relationships have grown over the years. Often the vet offices have questions and they prefer having a relationship with a pharmacy that can help answer questions and supply unique dosing options

Drug Topics: Where does pet compounding fall in line with all of your other offerings at Remedies Pharmacy?

We also do quite a bit of pediatric compounding and kids and pets have a lot in common when it comes to letting you know they don’t like the medicine. We work to find what works best for the patient and that then works best for the family. It might be flavoring, but it is a lot more than that. It might be the dosage form or the texture. We work with the family for administration techniques as well.

Drug Topics: While most pharmacies focus on valued care for humans, was it a challenge to begin offering veterinary services to your community?

Like with any other businesses, there are companies outside of Alabama that will mail products to those folks in our community. Those out-of-state pharmacies are not contributing to local communities, they do not support our local animal shelters and we do not get to keep their tax dollars to improve our towns and cities. We are locally owned. We appreciate our neighbors choosing to shop local.

If you or a pharmacist colleague is interested in being featured in Drug Topics’ 5 Questions With a Pharmacist series, please send all inquiries to editors@drugtopics.com.

READ MORE: 5 Questions With a Pharmacist: Henry and Jade Ranger from The Prescription Shoppe

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