From physical disabilites to drug allergies, compounding pharmacies provide patients with a level of care that far exceeds what a typical pharmacy can provide. Watch our video to learn more about why a compounding pharmacy is so beneficial.
My name is Trent Hollensworth, I’m a compounding pharmacist here at Smith Caldwell Drug Store. We work primarily with our community and our customers to specialize medications as they need.
Smith Caldwell is a very community-oriented pharmacy and that’s where the compounding really exploded is that we have always been extremely focused on customers and custom specialized medication is very much oriented in that community. That’s why I chose Smith Caldwell Drug Store because that is their focus, their community.
Compounding pharmacy is very much focused on a customer who cannot find or needs medication that is not available on the commercial side. A retail pharmacist sometimes is limited to the medications that are available to them on the shelf. Physicians need something sometimes for a patient that has an allergy, or a patient has certain dietary restrictions, or they have a physical issue where they can’t swallow something, or they need a larger dose then is available.
That’s where compounding comes in, so our hands are not tied with just what’s on our shelf. We can come into the compounding lab and work with what we have chemical wise and what the patient needs and come up with a plan with the physician to custom tailor these medications for these patients.
My name is Stan Chester, I’m one of the pharmacists at Smith Caldwell and I am also one of the owners. I first got into compounding, it’s been many, many years back researching and looking into other aspects of compounding and it’s been a good endeavor for us. We’re one of the only ones in central Arkansas that do the extent of [01:42] that we’re doing right now.
If a patient needs a compound medication or if they have a question about a compound medication or wonder what this is, they can always start with a conversation with a compounding pharmacist. They can always call Smith Caldwell Drug Store and say this is what I’ve got going on. What are the options that are out there? This can’t be my last resort. What can we do? A patient can call the pharmacy, the pharmacy can talk to the physician. The physician may request the patient come in, but the conversation can always be started between the customer and the compounding pharmacist.
Compounding medications can take a little bit of time. In some cases, they can take a day, and in some cases, they can two or three weeks. It really depends on what the medication is. If it’s something we’ve made before, if we’ve already got testing developed for that, those things can be moved along pretty fast.
At Smith Caldwell, we have the ability to bill compounding medications to third parties. Not all third parties accept those, and some third parties do, but we can always run them through and get an answer pretty quickly before we ever start the medication compounding process. We can have a cost analysis done up front.
Smith Caldwell Drug Store is open seven days a week. We’re open Monday through Saturday 8:00 AM to 9:00 PM and Sunday 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM. They can call anytime, talk to any pharmacist. All of our pharmacists are educated in compounding pharmacy. They don’t all do compounding medications but they all understand it and know the structure that surrounds our compounding laboratory.
We strive to always have the community at heart and provide for them the best service we can because we have a great customer base. We have a great community and they deserve the best thing that we can offer to them.