American Pharmacists Month: Pharmacy Owner Talks Changes, Rewarding Aspects of Profession

In an interview with Pharmacy Times®, Alan Corley, owner of Corley Pharmacy in Greenville, Tennessee and nominee for Cardinal Health's Community Leadership Award, discusses his career in the profession and the changes he has witnessed over his decades of practice. Corley reflects on some of the most rewarding aspects of his profession in celebration of American Pharmacists Month in October.

Pharmacy Times: Can you introduce yourself?

Alan Corley: [I’m] Alan Corley, pharmacist here in Greenville, Tennessee, been a long, lifelong resident of Tennessee. In fact, I've lived within 30 miles of here my entire life, other than when I was going to school. I graduated from University of Tennessee, College of Pharmacy in 1977, came straight home to the drug store we had just purchased, and have been there ever since. My wife, Mary Lynn, who also comes from a pharmacy family, and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary last month. So, we've been here for a long time.

Pharmacy Times: How did you get started with pharmacy?

Corley: Well, that one’s pretty easy. My mother and father are both pharmacists. In fact, they met at Southern College of Pharmacy while they were going to pharmacy school. Dad was from Georgia, Mom was from Tennessee, and she dragged me back to Tennessee. They graduated in 1953; I still have both of them at home, so very lucky there. Both of them were first-generation college students, so I pretty much grew up around the pharmacy; you know, tagging around them, following them around, they worked at pharmacies, they worked at hospitals. One of my earliest memories of “a job,” helping them with the pharmacy, was carrying cases of Maalox down the hospital hallway to the nurse's station. So, been doing that for a long time. They worked in a lot of community and hospital locations over the years, but I kind of always knew that I wanted to be a community pharmacist and own a pharmacy. So, my first paying job was in an independent pharmacy at age 16, and I've been working in a pharmacy since that time. Worked all the way through school, and then, of course, I graduated.

We bought a pharmacy the year I graduated here in Greenville. And so, at 23 years old, I was thrown into the role of managing that pharmacy, and running that pharmacy. Had a lot of help, but it was, it was kind of interesting. Everybody that worked there was older than I was and [had] been there a lot longer than I had. So, it was interesting for a while. Over the years, we have owned 5 pharmacies. The last 3 or 4 of those have been with the intention of helping out junior partners. We have helped young pharmacists who may have needed some financial mentoring help to get into pharmacy ownership position. And then, per my plan at least, all but one now have been bought by those junior partners, and I still own part of the original pharmacy. But other than that they've all been sold to our junior partners. So, I kind of was a natural to go to pharmacy. It's what I always want to do. I have 2 sisters, neither one of them were interested, but that's what I always knew that I wanted to do.

Pharmacy Times: How have you seen the profession change over your career?

Corley: Well, there's been a lot, obviously. Technology, of course, is a big one. You know, when I first started working, all the prescriptions were filed manually, and all the labels were typed on a typewriter, and there were no patient profiles. It was much different back then. Then we got computers, and printers, and faxes, and modems, and claims processing, and all that, so that really changed the actual physical processing of prescriptions a whole lot. And then the other thing that I always discussed with students when they come to the pharmacy is that, you know, probably 75% or 80% of the prescriptions we dispense today were not even available when I graduated from pharmacy school. Motrin was brand new when I was in pharmacy school. Tagamet was brand new, you know, and we didn't have aces, ARBs, PPIs, all these other things that we use all the time today, we didn't have any of those drugs. So, we had a lot fewer drugs to treat people with. Some of them were not nearly as clean as the drugs we have now. We did the best we could, but sometimes we didn't have good tools.

Another big change of course has been in in the diversity of pharmacists. Like I said, my mom graduated [in] 1953, and she was one of 3 females in a class of 125. Then when I graduated in 1977 there were about two-thirds male and one-third female. And today, I think the ratio is usually about one-third male and two-thirds females. I'm not saying in any way that's bad. I'm just saying it's a different situation than it was back in the early days, when there were not a whole lot of female pharmacists. I think they make great pharmacists. One of the biggest changes that hurts my heart is the number of roadblocks that are between us and our patients now. You see a patient go to the doctor, get a written prescription or call it in, [and] want to come into my pharmacy if I could convince them I was doing the best job. We had to compete with each other, but we didn't have to compete with mail order. We didn't have to compete with PBMs. We didn't have to compete with whoever. But based on the services that we provided and the benefit that we gave the patients, that's how we grew our business. Unfortunately, now that's not the case. I mean, you've got PBMs in the middle, rules and regs and closed contracts and all those things. And it's sometimes just really difficult to have the same type of relationship with patients that we did when I first started. So that's a bad thing, far as I'm concerned.

Pharmacy Times: What is the most rewarding part of pharmacy for you?

Corley: Well, I think it's seeing the impact that we can make on patients’ lives and health. You know, I guess one of the reasons I was always drawn to pharmacy is I saw the respect that people in the community and prescribers had for my parents as I grew up, and they trusted them, and they listened to them, and you know, that meant a lot to me. So I think the impact we can make on their lives and help is probably my most rewarding part, and providing quality care that that helps them, and being able to really make a difference. And then, being a resource for the community, seeing the larger community's respect for what we do and what we know and again, them recognizing that, and was making presentations to them, for example, or being invited to speak to them about health care topics. So that's another very rewarding part, is that the trust and respect that we get from the community.