Independent Pharmacy Closures Significantly Impact Health of US Population | APhA 2025
Lucas Berenbrok, PharmD, MS, discussed pharmacy deserts and how closures around the US have the potential to impact public health.
Independent pharmacies are crucial to the communities they serve nationwide, according to a session presented at the American Pharmacists Association 2025 Annual Meeting and Exposition.1 With their unique positioning across the country, independent pharmacy closures are negatively affecting underserved communities and must be addressed for the benefit of public health in the US.
“What happens when pharmacies close? What are our patients losing? What are our communities losing?” asked Lucas Berenbrok, PharmD, MS, in a presentation titled Blank Space: Discussing Pharmacy Deserts. “Well, they're losing access to convenient care. They're also losing those touch points to discuss health. We know just how frequently or often patients are coming to see pharmacists in both Medicare populations and commercial payers; it's about twice as often as patients are seeing their primary care providers.”
Berenbrok focused on the need for increasing reimbursement, recognition of pharmacists as providers, and more services pharmacists are able to bill for. | image credit: Gun / stock.adobe.com
In his presentation, Berenbrok provided the audience with an in-depth look at pharmacy closures, how they impact communities, and the dire need to address pharmacy deserts, which have spurred minimal access to care and medications in many urban and rural locales.
READ MORE: What is Being Done to Address Pharmacy Deserts in the US?
“You can put probably a list of 50-100 different reasons why we need good access to community pharmacies in the country,” he continued. “Usually, whenever I try to think about this myself, I think about the types of needs that I have, not as a pharmacist, but what I have as a patient, what I look to at my community pharmacy, what things I buy there, what things I expect my pharmacist to be able to help serve me.”
By putting himself in his patients’ shoes, and understanding how pharmacy access impacts them each individually, Berenbrok is able to easily shine a light on the importance of pharmacy services in various communities. And it’s not just the opinions and perspectives of pharmacists that prove how crucial pharmacies are to public health.
A previous Journal of the American Pharmacists Association study found that community pharmacies are highly accessible health care destinations, specifically based on drive time, in both urban and suburban areas.2 Berenbrok also noted data explaining that 88.9% of the US lives within 5 miles of a community pharmacy while 91.1% live within 20 minutes of one.1
“There's a lot of different ways in which we can define a pharmacy desert. It's based upon food desert definitions from the US Department of Agriculture and pharmacy deserts have been defined in 2 different ways in the literature,” said Berenbrok. Indeed, as previously mentioned, pharmacy deserts are either defined by drive time or distance. And with the term “pharmacy desert” only being coined in 2014,3 it may make sense why experts continue to deliberate on the definition of this lack in health care services.
While notably more challenging than calculating distance, drive time takes into account many more factors that translate to pharmacy access, including public transportation access, speed limits, traffic lights, time of day, and so much more. Berenbrok also touched on the fact that not all patients visit the pharmacy closest to their home and that pharmacy access to these people could be what’s closest to their work, children’s school, etc.
But despite continued debates on the best way to identify pharmacy deserts, the need to address them is significantly more important. “We have a problem with pharmacy closures for our country, but we also have a problem with pharmacy closures with specific populations, in which there already exists health disparities; we don't want those to widen,” he continued.1
After defining the issue and highlighting the need to address pharmacy deserts, Berenbrok discussed the overarching policy reforms that may begin to alleviate these growing challenges within pharmacy. There are several ways for pharmacists to combat the loss of pharmacy services, including increased patient education, community outreach, patient surveys, and so much more. However, according to Berenbrok and several other experts within the industry, significant change that positively impacts the population may come from federal policy reforms.
Among many reforms that can have a beneficial impact on the pharmacy industry, Berenbrok focused on the need for increasing pharmacist reimbursement, further recognition of pharmacists as providers, and an increase in the services pharmacists are able to bill for.
Alleviating pharmacy deserts within the US will almost certainly be a gradual effort. But through education, advocacy, and community-based services, independent pharmacies have the ability to correct the path of public health in the US and offer valued care to all populations. These pharmacies, however, simply may not be able to do it alone.
As the issue of pharmacy closures and deserts is ongoing, Berenbrok concluded his presentation with a hopeful yet skeptical look to the future.
“So how do we make sure that we're protecting these pharmacies, that they're not closing, that they can continue to serve the people that they do?” he concluded.1 “Are there ways to increase reimbursement for those areas in need? Can there be government subsidiaries for pharmacies? These are all things that people are thinking about, writing about, and advocating for.”
