By Stephen Smoot
The customers of the Pill Box Pharmacy have spoken and Pendleton Community Care has listened.
After hearing concerns about parking and problems that could arise from sick customers picking up medications, Pendleton Community Care has started the effort to move the Pill Box.
“This has been in the works for probably a year,” said Jamie Hudson, explaining that the decision predated Walgreens decision to close its Franklin location.
Hudson, director of Pendleton Community Care, announced on social media last week plans to move the facility. She stated that two of the pressing concerns of customers lay in the lack of convenient parking close to the entrance.
More importantly, parents of children and caregivers of adults both stated that a drive through would be helpful. Neither wanted to bring sick people into the store to expose others to communicable diseases if it could be helped.
“We’ll have a drive through where patients can drop off and pick up prescriptions,” said Hudson.
She wanted to emphasize, however, that the Pill Box drive through cannot function like those at a fast-food establishment, for example.
Customers can drop off orders and receive an estimated time when the prescription will be filled. Customers should not expect to be able to drop off prescriptions and pick them up in the same trip to the drive through since filling them can take hours of time.
The new facility will offer a boarder range of over-the-counter medications, but will not expand offerings into products such as gifts, food, or other items sold at a pharmacy like Walgreens.
They will continue to offer greeting cards as they traditionally have.
The planned location will be at the convergence of Glover Road and Pike Street near T&K Markets.
Hudson explained that they did not elect to move into the Walgreens space because adding a drive through, in addition to other needed changes, would be too costly.
The Pill Box is operated by Pendleton Community Care. PCC is a federally qualified health clinic, supported by federal funding to serve the public, but especially economically challenged patients who have difficulty accessing health care otherwise.
