Last week marked the end of an era in Whitehall, as Pitkin Drug and Gift Shop closed its pharmacy after serving the White Lake area for an amazing 141 years.
Pitkin’s pharmacy customers were transferred to Walgreens in Whitehall effective Nov. 9 at 8 a.m. The Pitkin pharmacy phone number now forwards to Walgreens.
The Pitkin gift shop will continue to operate. The store has changed its hours to line up with Posh by Pitkin next door, and is now open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday.
“The pharmacy business is just really challenging at this time,” Stacey Uganski, who along with Dee Briegel served as Pitkin pharmacists, said. “We’ve been struggling for some time. It wasn’t one thing, but a collection of factors. The insurance landscape, (pharmacy benefit managers), closed networks, the transitioning of practice of pharmacy, it just makes it so hard for a pharmacy, especially an independent pharmacy, to survive.”
Uganski said Pitkin considered the possibility of closing its pharmacy for some time due to the challenges of the business, but things really began ramping up over the summer.
It was certainly not an easy decision, and Uganski remains emotional about it.
“It still is weighing on us,” Uganski said. “It’s really hard. We’ve been part of this community downtown for a long time.”
The pharmacy said in a statement released on Facebook Thursday morning, Nov. 9, that it will miss its patients. Uganski said she couldn’t even hazard a guess how many customers the pharmacy still served prior to Thursday, but said she expects customers to continue to receive good service at Walgreens once the kinks are worked out.
“There will be hiccups the first couple days, but they will give good care,” Uganski said. “They can offer, just through their size, a lot more things than we can.”
“We just want all our patients to know we cherish and thank them for their support over the years,” Briegel added. “We’ll miss our interactions with them, but we’ll see them out in the community.”
Uganski said once the dust has settled from the pharmacy’s closure, Pitkin will consider any further adjustments to its business.
“That will hopefully be an exciting time to see what we can come up with, but we haven’t discussed that yet,” Uganski said.
