Patch reports that CVS has bought up one of the last two independent pharmacies in Decatur, The Medicine Shoppe at 215 Clairemont Avenue, and includes a bit of reflection from the last remaining independent pharmacy – McKinney’s.

“For 17 years, I’ve known Ramiro and watched him and his family takeover that business and run it as a community asset,” said Doug Taunton, owner of McKinney’s Apothecary in Decatur. “The independent pharmacy business has really decreased over the years. Not many young pharmacists want to get into the business … and it’s so much easier to go to work for the chains.”

In-town independent pharmacies seem to slowly be going the way of the fully-stocked independent grocery, buoyed a bit longer by the larger profit-margins of drugs that are all but non-existent in the “basic needs” world of milk, toilet paper, and non-artisanal bread.  (Yes, I know, this isn’t the first time I’ve brought this up.)

I wonder if pharmacies will also soon go the way of the grocery, going higher-end to pay those in-town rents.  Isn’t there already a pharmacy on the Upper West Side of NYC that sells growlers?  (Oh alcohol, where would we community-loving in-towners be without your tasty, necessary profit-margins?)

Look out Emory Village CVS.  From an Emory press release…(h/t to WCDarling)

Emory patients, visitors, faculty and staff will soon have access to a new outpatient pharmacy that is currently being constructed in The Emory Clinic – providing a new level of customer service and quicker access to prescription and over-the-counter medications.

Construction on the new facility began in January on the retail outpatient pharmacy called “The Pharmacy at Emory.” The full-service pharmacy will provide access to all the prescription drugs patients would find at a local pharmacy, some over the counter drugs as well as some more difficult to receive medications that are often needed by some patients, according to Amir Emamifar, Pharm D, MBA, administrative director of pharmaceutical services for Emory Hospitals, The Emory Clinic and the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University.

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