Streu’s to close Community Pharmacy and Retail Store after 70 years

GREEN BAY – After nearly 70 years serving the public, Streu’s Community Pharmacy and Retail Store will close its doors Nov. 30, shifting its focus instead towards long-term care.

“We have made the decision to restructure our organization and focus only on our long-term care services and discontinue serving patients in our community privately,” said Nicole Schreiner, CEO and owner of Streu’s Pharmacy. “It’s been a tough decision to make… It’s just become very difficult for community pharmacies to be financially viable due to the pharmacy [benefit] managers (PBMs) reimbursing numerous prescriptions at low costs. It’s very difficult to be able to manage and keep our pharmacy viable.”

Serving as the middlemen in the prescription drug supply chain, PBMs negotiate prices for prescription drugs and manage prescription drug benefits for patients’ health plans.

PBMs are responsible for setting the reimbursement rates for drugs, but when those rates are set below independent pharmacies’ costs, local pharmacies like Streu’s suffer.

“The whole model has become unsustainable for pharmacies,” Schreiner said. “It’s very difficult for pharmacies to be able to pay the bills and to be able to be a sustainable business… It’s been publicly announced that Rite Aid closed their doors and filed for bankruptcy, Walgreens announced publicly that they were closing a significant number of their stores nationwide — it’s creating an access problem and it's changing the ability for pharmacists to be able to provide services, medications and medication-related services to our patients.”

And those services that pharmacies like Streu’s provide, Schreiner said, play an important role in a patient’s overall care.

“Healthcare has become very siloed and segmented,” Schreiner said. “If people have a neurologist, a cardiologist, a primary care provider and a psychiatrist, we’re the glue that holds that all together. That’s what a pharmacy does. We hold it all together. If there’s a duplication of therapy, if there’s a drug interaction, if there’s no appropriate dosage for a patient’s age, we’re the ones doing all of that… This means [patients] are losing that part of their holistic care team. When we force people to mail order or force people to use an out-of-town pharmacy that doesn’t know them by name or doesn’t know their background or the little things that we do for our patients — whether that be special stickers that they need to be able to recognize their morning meds from their evening meds or hole punching for patients that are visually impaired — that’s a sad thing… It’s been a very emotional journey for our team… I believe we take good care of our patients. We aren’t perfect, but we strive for excellence for our patients and we really want to be part of their healthcare team.”

Current Streu’s Pharmacy patients are encouraged to speak with their pharmacist during their visit, call (920) 437-0206 or visit streuspharmacybaynatural.com for assistance with transferring their records to another pharmacy.

Although the Community Pharmacy and Retail Store portion of the business will be closed, Streu’s will continue to serve patients through its long-term care operation, which has been around for more than 50 years.

“We are very fortunate to have our long-term care, which is robust and growing, and to be able to continue to serve our community through that asset,” Schreiner said. 

Streu’s long-term care pharmacy currently serves 2,200 patients in the greater Green Bay area, which provides specialized packaging of medications for patients.

“Long-term care is for patients who reside in either skilled nursing facilities or assisted living facilities in our area,” Schreiner said. “These are patients who usually require some help with medication management, so we provide blister pack services, which makes it easier for healthcare or non-healthcare specialists to be able to help them manage their medication and prescriptions.”

These services enable organizations like Boll Adult Care Concepts, who have utilized Streu’s Pharmacy for long-term care for 20 years, to ensure their patients are getting the right medication, in the right amount, at the right time across their two adult family homes and in the community through Boll’s Community Supportive Home Care program.

“In some ways, this pharmacy is the main reason why we’re able to do what we do,” said Brianna Wright, program manager at Boll Adult Care Concepts. “Because we are bringing medications to individuals in blister packs — which have their name on it and indicate all of the medications — that’s how we can bring medications to them and see that it is the correct person, the correct time, the correct dose and the correct route.”

Through organizations like Boll Adult Care Concepts, Streu’s long-term care and blister packing services also benefit patients who live at home but require additional assistance managing their medications.

“Research shows that one of the main reasons people end up in a hospital or need to be in some type of assisted living or skilled nursing facility is due to medication mismanagement,” Schreiner said. “This is helping patients stay independent for a longer period of time.”

Streu’s Community Pharmacy and Retail Store’s last day open will be Nov. 30, after which the building will be closed to the public, converting to a “true closed-door pharmacy,” Schreiner said, and focusing space and resources on the expansion of long-term care services.