I Miss the Old Pharmacies

Since November, I’ve been placed on some medications that I will need to take for the rest of my life.

So, I have gone to the pharmacy more in the last 10 months than I have in my entire 54 years of life. For me, going to the pharmacy can be a stressful experience. Today almost every pharmacy that is in my neighborhood is corporate owned.

The second that I walk in, I feel a sense of stress and the feeling of being overwhelmed. There is a huge turnover of employees. I rarely see the same face and don’t feel a connection with any of them.

The pharmacist barely lifts their head. They are constantly looking down onto the counter, filling orders for medications. The pharmacy techs are understaffed and are jumping from the long line of drive-thru customers to their long line of in-store customers.

The only thing that they’re thinking about is how to get to the next person and fill their request as soon as possible. No small talk, get to the point, get in and out as fast as possible.

To say the very least, the experience for the customer is horrendous.

This is not the fault of the employees at all. This has to do with the culture and the priorities of the company. Their motto feels like, “See as many people in a day as possible. If the customer relationship suffers, so be it. That’s not OUR priority.”

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This was not the case years ago. As a kid, I remember how pharmacies were mostly family owned. Usually, the pharmacist was the owner and their family members helped run other parts of the store.

The pharmacist and their employees knew most of their clients and the pharmacy’s main goal was to keep the customer in the store as long as possible.

That is why many pharmacies had diners in them. As kids, we would go many times to pharmacies to grab a grilled cheese sandwich and a milkshake. The pharmacist would then ask how your parents were doing because they knew them personally.

But as the big corporate chains came in, these small mom and pop pharmacies began dying off. They began to close one by one and so did the attention to the customer experience.

This exact thing is happening in medicine and in dentistry.

A record number of family-owned dental offices are being bought by the corporate institutions. These corporate offices then take these dental offices and make them into a Dental Walmart, per se.

They make the number one goal to make as much money as possible. And the customer feels it. They feel that they are being upsold every step of the way and don’t feel that the office has their best interest at heart.

These offices also have a retention problem and have a rotating slew of dentists. The patient ends up seeing a different dentist each and every time they come in. New dentist means you must rehash your entire dental history, and you don’t feel properly cared for.

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We hear it all the time and are getting more patients coming over each month because they are sick of the lack of attention.

I am proud to say that we are a family-owned dental office. I founded Dente 20 years ago and built our practice one patient at a time. Many of our staff have been with us for over 10 years and some have been with us for 15 years.

You see the same dentist. ME, each and every time you come in. That means consistency of care and the development of a unique dental relationship.

Going to the dentist is scary and having a good relationship of trust is essential to having a good experience.

If you or someone you know is sick of corporate dentistry and would like to experience patient centered dental care, please visit us at mydente.comor call 773-292-1911 to schedule your appointment.

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Usa el hilo dental como un loco

Emilio “Consistency = Care” Couret