What happens after a Philly neighborhood’s last chain pharmacy shuts its doors

Ronald and Onelia Doughty joke that they have their own pharmacy of medications inside their Grays Ferry home.

He takes pills for heart failure, COPD, and asthma. She takes liver, nerve, blood pressure, and antinausea medication and is on oxygen at night.

As for their actual pharmacy, Ronald Doughty, 64, used to walk around the corner to Rite Aid a couple times a week to pick up their medications. Then this fall, a pharmacist there told him news that he said felt like “a knife in the heart.”

The 30th and Reed Streets store is among dozens of locations that the Philadelphia-based chain has closed in recent months as Rite Aid filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Nationwide, pharmacies have struggled with decreased reimbursements, staffing shortages, and other issues. CVS recently announced it would close dozens of its pharmacies inside Targets early this year.

In Grays Ferry, a historically working-class neighborhood where about half of residents are Black and many households make less than $44,000 a year, their Rite Aid’s closure has caused logistical struggles and stirred up what some residents describe as feelings of being abandoned and forgotten. Their stories represent a snapshot of the reverberations that are occurring across the region and the country as more pharmacies close.

» READ MORE: Once-opposing Grays Ferry groups unite to change their neighborhood

Some Grays Ferry residents have cobbled together solutions to get to the South Broad Street and Snyder Avenue Rite Aid, two miles away, where they say their prescriptions were transferred. Some who don’t own cars have taken the bus — nearly an hour-long round-trip — while others have spent $20 or more using rideshare services such as Uber or Lyft every time they need to visit the pharmacy. There was talk of arranging a neighborhood car pool, but it never came together.

“I’ve got heart problems, lung problems. … It was hard enough for me to walk around the corner,” said Ronald Doughty, who doesn’t own a car.

For weeks this fall, he took the bus or borrowed the car of his grown son, who lives in West Philadelphia and has a family of his own. Doughty, who uses a cane, worried about his safety when he took a bus out of his neighborhood, where he knows almost everyone. The couple recently talked to their doctors at Penn Medicine and arranged to pick up their prescriptions when they go to their regular appointments in University City.

Still, they miss their neighborhood Rite Aid. Its loss feels personal.

“We’re the ones who always get the short ends” of the sticks, he said.

Rite Aid has recently closed dozens of stores across the region — some in lower-income areas such as Camden and Grays Ferry, others in more affluent suburbs such as Doylestown and West Chester. More remote areas in central Pennsylvania and New Jersey have also been impacted.

Decisions to close stores are based on several factors, including “business strategy, lease and rent considerations, local business conditions and viability, and store performance, Rite Aid spokesperson Alicja Wojczyk said in October.

Rite Aid mails letters to customers and puts signs in stores “in the weeks leading up to a closure,” spokesperson Catherine Carter said recently, responding to questions about the concerns of Grays Ferry residents.

Prescriptions are automatically transferred to a nearby Rite Aid or other pharmacy, with no disruption of service. If a customer would like to send their prescriptions to a different pharmacy, they must contact that pharmacy themselves to initiate that process, Carter said.

“Rite Aid is committed to improving access to critical health services across our markets,” Carter said in a statement. “In connection with our court-supervised process and ongoing evaluation of our footprint, we have conducted additional research to help ensure we do not create pharmacy deserts in the communities we serve.”

After a closure, the company internally tracks what percentage of customers pick up their prescriptions at their new Rite Aid pharmacy, but declined to share that “proprietary data.”

In Grays Ferry and other neighborhoods where chain pharmacies have closed, other independent pharmacies remain, but experts say customers often get confused about whether their insurance covers prescriptions elsewhere. And the price of medications can vary widely at different pharmacies, for reasons even industry insiders aren’t privy to, said Patrick Keenan, director of policy and partnerships for the Pennsylvania Health Access Network, a consumer advocacy organization.

» READ MORE: Independent pharmacists fight burnout and industry pressures as Rite Aid and CVS close stores

Even if another area pharmacy can fill a prescription at a similar cost, its hours may be shorter, which can be particularly challenging for working customers, Keenan said.

“When a pharmacy closes, that just creates one of the last barriers,” said Keenan, noting the top two barriers are medication price and transportation. “We often hear just more people give up and they’re not able to get the medications that they need.”

Dima Qato, an associate professor at the University of Southern California’s Mann School of Pharmacy and a national expert on pharmacy access, said her research has shown that less access leads to lower adherence to medications, greater likelihood that residents stop taking their medications entirely, and lower vaccination rates. Communities of color and areas that are more reliant on public transportation are disproportionately impacted, she added.

But the pharmacies themselves can only do so much, she said, meaning larger policy solutions are the greatest hope for mitigating some of these issues.

“This is kind of the crux of the problem: Pharmacies have no moral obligation to anyone really,” Qato said. “At the end of the day, they’re businesses, and they’re businesses that stay open if they perform well.”

Still, for customers in communities that are already underserved, a pharmacy’s closure can feel personal.

After Camden’s last Rite Aid closed this fall, some customers found their way to Bell Rexall Pharmacy, an independent pharmacy that has been a mainstay in the city’s Parkside section for more than 90 years. When they arrived, owner Anthony V. Minniti said they weren’t in a good mood.

“It’s a circumstance [in which] they’ve just been to their pharmacy to find out their pharmacy has closed. It’s more a confusion, abandonment feeling,” Minniti said. “Clearly people are not happy. There is no question about that, because they just don’t know what to do.”

For Camden residents, some of whom don’t own cars, the nearest Rite Aids are now several miles away in Collingswood or Pennsauken.

“For many residents, just getting from the downtown to Parkside, which is less than a mile, that’s a challenge,” Minniti said “Going to Pennsauken? That’s not even an option for them.”

In Grays Ferry, Charles Reeves, 65, said he would go to the now-closed Rite Aid around the corner three or four times a week. He’d not only pick up his and his wife’s prescriptions, but he’d also grab individual grocery items, bandages and other medical supplies, even Christmas decorations and Halloween candy.

When he heard the store was closing, “I felt disrespected, first of all,” he said. “It was like a smack in our face. … I felt like, ‘You all abandoned the whole community.’ ”

Grays Ferry residents have had no choice but to adjust in the months since their neighborhood Rite Aid closed.

“It leaves people without options,” said James Ross, 58. Because of so few choices here, he said he still drives to pick up his prescriptions at a Rite Aid in Southwest Philadelphia, where he lived before moving to Grays Ferry.

Camella Gray, 63, said it takes her an hour round-trip to travel by bus to the Rite Aid at Broad and Snyder — not including any time spent waiting in line — much longer than it used to take her to walk essentially “next door” to the Grays Ferry Rite Aid.

Twice a month, Reeves, who is recovering from back surgery, said he gets a relative to pick up his and his wife’s prescriptions, or his wife pays about $25 round-trip on a Lyft to the pharmacy. He’s been frustrated, too, he said, by struggles to get through to the new Rite Aid over the phone. (Carter, the Rite Aid spokesperson, said their pharmacists are working hard, with customer service “among our highest priorities.”)

But he said he’s optimistic that within a month or so, his doctors and insurers will be able to get his medications mailed to him.

Until then, he said, he’ll make do.

“I’ve got grandkids, I’ve got people who can get my medicines,” Reeves said. “But the people that can’t, … that’s the part I worry about.”