Laketown Pharmacy adjusts to virus concerns

MOSES LAKE — John Rackham, a co-owner of Laketown Pharmacy in Moses Lake, said the staff has been working out different options to continue to provide their customers’ medications while discouraging them from coming into the store.

The pharmacy, located at the Samaritan Healthcare Clinic, is not closed to the public, but Rackham said he and his staff want to minimize the risk to their patients and themselves, in this time of coronavirus.

“We definitely started encouraging, and make available, a curbside pickup option, where patients can actually call us when they get here,” Rackham said.

The pharmacy also has a text message service people can use, instead of calling, which links right to the software system, Rackham said.

The biggest concern for the Laketown Pharmacy owner, and everyone, is the high-risk population, particularly elderly patients or those whose immune system might be compromised.

Rackham said they’ve reached out to customers they believe to be at high-risk, assuring the pharmacy would take care of their medication and to avoid coming by in person. Some of these high-risk patients, Rackham said, have had loved ones come to the store in their place.

While the pharmacy does offer a delivery option, he said they don’t really have the staff to make it a viable option all the time.

“We do a few, but it’s really few and far between on those,” Rackham said. “And we are doing mail-outs for patients who absolutely don’t want to leave their homes.”

While the pharmacy co-owner said the facility has a strict sanitation policy, the staff has upped the cleaning and sanitation to hourly, at the minimum.

“If we have any patient come in that has any kind of respiratory issue, or anything like that, then it’s automatically ‘stop everything,’ even if the person behind them has to wait,” Rackham said. “We just want to make sure we get everything clean and sanitized.”

Rackham said he and his employees are subjected to the same screenings as Samaritan employees when they arrive each day, having their temperature taken and answering screening questions.

For about the past two weeks, Rackham said the staff has been required to wear protective masks. As in many places, Rackham said masks were in short supply.

“Luckily, we had some patients of ours that actually made us some hand-made masks, and donated them to the pharmacy for our use,” Rackham said. “We are very grateful to our patients for kind of watching out for us in this time with shortage of PPE and everything like that.”

Moving forward, Rackham said the pharmacy will keep open communication with customers to ensure they are getting the care they desire. Rackham said they’ve looked into contingency plans, including going to only curbside-pickup for orders, if things come to that.

He said he is grateful to be considered an essential business at this time. Two things people will always need, Rackham said, are food and medicine.

“If pharmacies were to shut down, you’d have many more people in the hospital, kind of clogging up the system, because they can’t get their routine medication,” Rackham said.

Rackham and Mark DuVall took over Laketown Pharmacy, at the time called Pioneer Medical Center Pharmacy, in the summer of 2016. Both pharmacists went to school at Washington State University but, Rackham said, they didn’t meet until they were working at pharmacies here in Moses Lake. DuVall had been the manager at Walgreens and Walmart pharmacy, before coming to join Rackham at Rite Aid. Rackham said they tossed around the idea of opening their own pharmacy, but just pushed the idea aside. They liked working together, so they decided they would partner up.

Rackham said they were halfway joking when they first called David and Rebecca Thomas, the owners of Pioneer for more than 20 years, to ask if they’d be interested in selling. They were interested.

Rackham said he was originally going toward forensic science in college, before an adviser helped him see he might actually be more interested in pharmacology. Pairing that passion for understanding toxicology and the way chemicals interact with the human body with a love for helping others, Rackham said he knows he’s right where he wants to be.