Owner of Sebastopol Family Pharmacy bucks trend of large drugstore chains

There are two reasons why Michael Majeski often smiles as he goes about his daily tasks of filling prescriptions and consulting with patients and doctors.

Majeski, the 34-year-old pharmacist at the independently owned Sebastopol Family Pharmacy, loves his job and helping people. In his business, one cannot exist without the other.

It’s the reason he abandoned working at large pharmacy chains to work for the small Sebastopol drugstore in October 2018.

“In the corporate world, you’re pressed on time and efficiency,” Majeski said last week, while preparing a prescription. “In this setting, you can give patients more time.”

That means more time to consult with patients, more time to understand complex drug interactions and more time for professional training in his field.

“I really enjoy coming to work everyday,” Majeski said. “I don’t feel as burdened and stressed as I used to in the corporate world.”

That environment is exactly what Sebastopol Family Pharmacy owner Amalia Nicola was aiming for when she quietly opened the small drugstore without much fanfare nearly a year and a half ago.

Nicola, who also owns a Guerneville pharmacy, operates two of the 15 local drugstores in Sonoma County. Across California, the number of independent pharmacies has declined by 15% the past three to five years, said Ken Thai, president of the California Pharmacists Association. Changes in the way pharmacies are reimbursed by insurers, which benefits the large chains, has put local drugstore owners at a big disadvantage trying to compete with industry behemoths CVS and Walgreens.

But Thai said independent pharmacies, if they can survive, have an inherent advantage over the chains because they are more patient-centered and integrated in the local community.

However, in a statement CVS said its stores also strive to be community-oriented.

Nicola’s focus on the local customer is paying off, she said.

“We wanted to give people the opportunity to see what we can offer, really, not brag about it,” she said. “Thanks to the support of the local community, the chamber of commerce and West County Health Centers, we’re doing good. Retail pharmacy is not easy these days. But we’re making a profit, enough to pay the bills.”

In November, Nicola held an open house at the pharmacy on 652 Petaluma Ave., in the same building that houses the Gravenstein Community Health Center, one of several health centers run by the West County Health Centers.

The 700-square-foot space includes a small reception area with pickup and consultation windows, two shelves of over-the-counter drugs and a small stand of snacks and an equally small cooler with bottled water, Guayaki Yerba Mate and soft drinks.

One day last week, Nicola’s husband Valentin Filip, who helps her with the business, restocked the cooler and ran deliveries for pharmacy patients - a service that’s provided free of charge.

Filip said business was slow when they first started but it’s slowly picked up as more and more people learn about it.

Nicola is no newcomer to running pharmacies. She acquired Lark Rexall Drugs in Guerneville six years ago from then-owners Al Staszel and Jim Gaffney, the fifth owners of what has been a drug store institution in the Russian River community for more than 100 years.

Nicola had worked at Lark Rexall for 15 years, first as a clerk and eventually as its manager before she bought it. Nicola is originally from Romania, where she studied finance and accounting.

She said her parents thought it would be a good idea for her to travel before settling down, so she came to California in 1999 and ended up in Guerneville in the spring of that year. She met the owners, fell in love with the west county community and started working at the drugstore.

About three years ago, staff at West County Health Centers approached Nicola with the idea of opening a pharmacy near its Sebastopol clinic. Lark Rexall and West County Health Centers had developed a successful relationship over the years, in part because of a federal statute that requires pharmaceutical manufacturers participating in Medicaid to sell outpatient drugs at discounted prices to health centers that care for uninsured and low-income patient.

The so-called 340B drug pricing program has been a lifeline for many independent pharmacies as they struggle to compete against drugstore chains like Walgreens and CVS, said Thai, the head of the state pharmacists association.

Thai, himself an owner of independent pharmacies, said the number of independent pharmacies in California and across the country has been declining rapidly. He said there are roughly 2,400 independently owned pharmacies in the state, about half of the state’s 4,800 pharmacies.

“Nationally, our numbers have actually been dropping at the largest rate we’ve dropped for decades,” Thai said.

Not far from Sebastopol Family Pharmacy is the new CVS, which opened two years ago on the corner of Petaluma and Sebastopol avenues, after several years of legal battles and community opposition. The 16,000-square-foot CVS was erected at the site of the former Pellini Chevrolet dealership.

CVS said in a statement its pharmacists provide a number of services and are an “important part of the communities where they live and work.”

“We support our pharmacists with tools and resources that help them offer unique clinical pharmacy services,” the largest national drug retailer said.

These include medication adherence programs, automatic refills that help patients take their medications on time and as directed, immunizations, text alerts to inform patients when their prescriptions are ready and digital tools that help patients manage their prescriptions.

But Jason Cunningham, chief medical officer for West County Health Centers, said small pharmacies tend to be more grounded in a community. Large pharmacies, he said, tend to move their pharmacists around from one store to another.

Cunningham, who will become CEO of West County Health Centers in March, said he thinks the Sebastopol pharmacy will share the same success Lark Rexall has experienced for decades.

“They are very much patient-focused, doing everything they can to make sure the system works for the patient,” he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter ?@pressreno.