Teresa Salgado, director of VCU’s Center for Pharmacy Practice Innovation, says she and her colleagues found 51 places that could be classified as pharmacy deserts.
“The distance to a pharmacy would be greater than one mile in an urban location, greater five miles for suburban and then greater for ten miles for rural,” she explains.
One possible reason – these are unprofitable communities where a large percentage of residents are poor, uninsured or covered only by Medicare or Medicaid. And Salgado says those people lose more than access to medications.
“It’s access to a highly skilled and highly trained healthcare professional – the pharmacist, but it’s also access to several primary care services including immunizations or access to contraception or where you can be tested for strep throat or urinary tract infections for example, and you can get your antibiotics on the spot," Salgado says.
The findings, published in the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association, also showed that by adding brick-and-mortar pharmacies or mobile drugstores in 44 locations, most deserts could be eliminated, and convenient service would be restored to as many as 10,000 people each.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
