Good for what ails you

Photography by James Moore

Ozarks Healthcare pharmacies are a lifeline in small-town Missouri

There’s a note of pride, joy even, in Katie Mahan’s voice when she’s talking about pharmacies. If that sounds like an off-brand thing to have such passion about, consider that Mahan has served Ozarks Healthcare for 21 years, had a hand in opening the company’s first pharmacy location and has helped birth each subsequent one since.

Now OZHs’ Director of Pharmacy and 340B Program, she leads a department that operates locations in multiple communities throughout the health system’s service area. Through their efforts, she and her team provide essential pharmacy services and vital medications to areas that have been overlooked by bigger chains and where small, independent pharmacies have gradually disappeared.

“Our pharmacy in Gainesville is the only one in the county. People would be driving for nearly half an hour to get their medications filled if we didn’t have that pharmacy in that community,” she said. “In Thayer, we’re right there in the clinic. Patients can see their provider, and they can get their prescription filled right there while they wait.”

All told, Ozarks Healthcare operates five pharmacies: two retail and one specialty location in West Plains and one retail location each in Thayer and Gainesville. The move into operating pharmacies started as an employees-only perk in West Plains in 2005, and the push to provide retail services to various communities started happening around 2018.

In two instances, OZH bought existing hometown pharmacies where the owners were looking to retire. This not only helped sustain communities where the mom-and-pop was the only drugstore in town, Mahan noted, but provided a patient-centric alternative to chain stores.
“In our West Plains community, we no longer have any independent pharmacies in this town. There are a lot of chains,” she said. “We feel like, as an independent pharmacy with Ozarks Healthcare, that we’re able to provide the kind of customer service that some of the chains are not able to do.

“A lot of people automatically think the chain pharmacies are going to be less expensive, and that’s just not the case. There’s also a continuity of care that you can’t get when our healthcare providers send a prescription outside to a chain store. That is definitely a benefit to the patient.”
Mahan’s passion for customer service in the pharmacy business is shared by her ranking lieutenants, and it’s not hard to see why. Having grown up locally, they saw firsthand the difficulty people in rural areas and small towns often experience in accessing services — be it a grocery store, banking, healthcare or pharmacy.

For people like pharmacist Melynni Yarber, retail pharmacy operations manager and a West Plains native, the work is personal.
“We have a vested interest in our patients because many of them are family and friends, and we know them outside of this operation,” she said. “I think the customer service here is second to none. I think it’s awesome.”

Yarber comes to her role after 17 years of working at an outside pharmacy and managing the retail pharmacy at the hospital’s medical office building since 2019. In that role, she immersed herself in patient-focused services such as the Meds to Beds program.

“Meds to Beds delivers to the patient’s bedside,” she said. “With that, we send a pharmacist to each room to counsel the patients on their medications before they leave. We make sure they have everything they need, and they understand how to use their medications before they leave the hospital.”

In her new role, Yarber is tasked with ensuring all pharmacies uphold the same high standard of customer service, offering home delivery and consultation services in the same spirit of convenience and personal attention.

“We do offer local delivery with our pharmacies, which is one nice service,” she said. “And then a lot of our patients and co-workers and even the physicians know the pharmacists on a personal level. They can reach out to us, even when we’re not in the building, to help people and answer questions and to take care of them.”

Technology is a big focus for the future of the pharmacies, but the inevitability of those tools does nothing to dilute Yarber’s commitment to remain as hands-on as possible.

“I feel like I’m taking care of my own family,” she said. “I mean, that’s what I got into pharmacy for, to be able to help people, to be able to reach out and care for them.”

For everything that OZH’s pharmacies offer that are on par with the competition, there are some services that are available only through the health system. This includes 340B, a federal program that helps ensure qualified low-income individuals can afford their medication.
“We’re what’s known as a DSH, a Disproportionate Share Hospital, which means we have a disproportionate share of Medicaid patients,” Mahan said. “As a result, man

y patients in our community struggle with the cost of their prescriptions. This program allows qualified hospitals like Ozarks Healthcare to buy patient medications, and we can pass that discount on to patients who qualify.”

In addition to its own pharmacy locations, OZH serves more small communities throughout its service area by partnering with a network of contracted drugstores in Alton, Thayer, Winona, Mountain Grove and Willow Springs. In this way, Ozarks Healthcare reaches the maximum number of people who may qualify for assistance.

“This program is very, very important,” said Gavonna Fore, 340B pharmacy administrative coordinator who grew up locally in Alton. “There are many patients in our community who cannot afford their medications. They may not have insurance. They may not be able to afford their copays. So, with this program, we can ensure that we are offering our patients the medications that they need.”

Another feature unique to Ozarks Healthcare is specialty pharmacy, a designation that allows for dispensing more complex medicines.
“Typically, specialty pharmacy patients have chronic medical conditions in neurology, rheumatology, oncology, dermatology and infectious disease,” said Ashlee Cox, specialty pharmacy manager. “The medications required for them can be more complex; it could be something about how they take the medicine or just being the type of medication it is.”

Located in West Plains, the specialty pharmacy also provides convenience and expertise locally, eliminating the need for patients or their families to drive considerable distances for their medications.

“To my knowledge, the next closest specialty pharmacy would be in Springfield. There’s not going to be another one in West Plains, certainly,” Cox said. “Another benefit we offer is having a local pharmacist who can answer questions about the medication. Other specialty pharmacies may not have a person locally they can talk to.”

A native of West Plains, Cox said she considers her work to be a calling, and the culture of Ozarks Healthcare allows her to live that calling to the utmost.

“I really went into pharmacy because I enjoy helping people, and I enjoyed science,” she said. “Ozark Healthcare is a great community-minded organization. That was part of why I wanted to come to work here. The specialty pharmacy is an exciting new opportunity, because of how it benefits the community. Getting to come back home and do that job locally and help people who live here in this area is very fulfilling.”