ROCHESTER — Over its 65 years of business, Hunt's Silver Lake Drug & Gift has built a reputation for taking care of the Rochester community's pharmacy needs, said Phil Hommerding, a pharmacist and the owner of Hunt's. "We do service a lot of long-term care facilities, group homes," Hommerding said. "(We) do a lot of hospice business as well, take care of a lot of people in their last days, so rewarding work.
" Hunt's is Rochester's only independent pharmacy, a type of health care provider that is becoming increasingly rare in Minnesota. In 1996, the state had 550 community, non-chain pharmacies, according to the Minnesota Board of Pharmacy. As of 2023, that number was down to 156.
"If we were just a community pharmacy with no front end and no other sales coming in ...
it would be super hard to stay in business right now," Hommerding said. "And I think that's why we're losing a ton of pharmacies in smaller communities." The financial woes impacting independent pharmacies have been in the making for decades.
The core issue: inadequate reimbursements from pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, which manage prescription drug benefits and claims between health insurance plans and pharmacies. Oftentimes, when a pharmacy fills a prescription, the cost of stocking that medication is higher than what the pharmacy is paid after the sale. "We get underpaid for so many prescriptions that we sell," Hommerding said.
"In many instances, (pharmacies are) losing $50, $75 a crack on some of thes.
