The NCPA 2026 Annual Convention wraps today in Kansas City. Four days, two general sessions, and the 2026 Digest released into the middle of it. Jim Flood and Scott Douglas laid out the midterm outlook and what it means for the next round of PBM reform, with Anne Cassity moderating. Zack Kass talked...
The NCPA 2026 Annual Convention opens this week in Kansas City. The Digest will be released, and so will updated data from the USC-NCPA Pharmacy Access Initiative. Both will tell the same story from different angles.
Approximately one in eight U.S. neighborhoods now persistently lacks convenient ac...
On September 1, NCPA announced the next phase of ACCESS to Pharmacy Care. A new Co-Management and Referral pathway is under development, one that would give community pharmacies a formal role in the CMS ACCESS care model for patients with Original Medicare. It's on the agenda at NCPA 2026 in Kansas ...
Most coverage of last year's JAMA Health Forum study on community pharmacy turnover landed on the same headline: independent pharmacies are opening and closing more than chains. Read the headline and you assume it's bad news for independent pharmacy. Read the data underneath it and a different pictu...
The advocacy win is a real fact.
In July, the FTC secured a settlement with CVS Caremark. Back-to-back settlements with Express Scripts and Caremark, with the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2026 adding legislative weight, and Drug Topics covered the combination as a reshaping of transparency st...
Drug Topics ran an editorial in its July/August issue that every independent pharmacy owner should read carefully. The title is "Facing Reimbursement Pressure, Pharmacy Answers With Clinical Value," and the headline implies pressure rather than triumph.
The article describes what's happening across...
Drug Topics published something last month that independent pharmacy owners should read carefully rather than emotionally. J.D. Power's 2026 U.S. Pharmacy Study surveyed more than fourteen thousand pharmacy customers, and the two halves of the market moved in opposite directions. Mail-order satisfac...
Most independent pharmacy patients who trust you have never referred anyone to you. It isn't that they're unhappy, and it isn't that they wouldn't recommend you if somebody asked them directly. Nobody ever gave them the moment, and nobody ever gave them the words.
The Hesitation Worth Noticing
NCP...
When patients come looking for a new pharmacy, they find whoever they already know.
Drug Topics has been covering something every independent pharmacy owner should be paying attention to. Retail pharmacies are closing, and not in a forecast about the back half of the decade. It's happening now. Com...
Your best patients are being recruited right now.
Bryan Wheeler, an independent pharmacist writing in Drug Topics, broke down how the Medicare GLP-1 Bridge is changing pharmacy operations. Adam Fein's Drug Channels Institute added a new section to the 2026 Economic Report on manufacturer direct-to-...
Patients are about to move.
Walgreens is closing under 100 more stores in 2026, on top of a 1,200-store wind-down. CVS just opened its first small-format, apothecary-style pharmacy in Chicago and plans roughly 60 new locations this year. Rite Aid is gone. And on May 22, Tennessee's governor signed ...
Drug Topics published something this week that stopped me mid-scroll.
An article on digital marketing for independent pharmacies. Practical, well-intentioned, useful. It covers websites, social platforms, and how to choose between Facebook and Instagram depending on whether you're in a college town...
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