Middletown Pharmacy and Wellness Staff Care for the Community

Tara Schneider, PharmD, is the owner and pharmacist-in-charge at Middletown Pharmacy and Wellness in Louisville, Kentucky. Schneider is a 2011 graduate of the Southwestern Oklahoma State University College of Pharmacy.

The pharmacy opened in 2021 and Tara and her husband, Chuck Schneider, MBA, took the reins in November 2023. Both had extensive experience in the independent pharmacy arena. Tara owned a closed-door pharmacy that focused on clinical services while Chuck was the chief revenue officer at Pharmacy Development Services at Ananda Professional.

“We saw Middletown Pharmacy and Wellness as a great opportunity to offer the community expanded clinical services such as vaccinations, point-of-care testing [POCT], functional medicine, and long-term care [LTC] services,” Tara recalls. Now together, Tara and Chuck operate the Point of Care Testing Institute, helping other independent pharmacies implement POCT services.

The pharmacy offers a range of services, including LTC services, functional wellness, pharmacogenomic testing, and test-to-treat respiratory services.

“Patients appreciate our ability to quickly test and, if indicated, provide treatment all in 1 spot so they can get to feeling better,” Tara says.

She added that the entire staff is trained on how to intake a patient for POCT, even walk-ins, using a standardized assessment based on the patient’s needs. For example, if the patient thinks they have strep throat, the staff member prepares the respiratory intake form and gets everything ready for the pharmacist to perform the tests. Some technicians are trained on collection and testing, allowing the pharmacists to maintain normal pharmacy operations until it’s time for the patient consultation.

Additionally, the pharmacy is known for carrying certain products, including specialty products such as Ortho Molecular, Integrative Therapeutics, Solutions Rx, Ananda Professional, and Pure Encapsulations supplements; POCTs including flu, strep, and lipids; and functional medicine tests from Nimbus, OmegaQuant, and Berkeley Life. Tara says women’s hormone tests are the No. 1 seller in the pharmacy. Tara, Chuck, and the pharmacy staff aim to make patients feel welcome in their pharmacy.

“We have created a welcoming atmosphere. When you walk into the pharmacy, there’s soft music in the background and the fresh smell of oranges and mint. There’s also a coffee bar for patients to enjoy while they wait, and a community board. We greet everyone who comes in the door and ask them about their day. We want to make them feel like family,” she shares. “We get to know our patients on a personal level. People come to us from large chain drug stores where they feel like a number, [and] our goal is to know our patients when they walk through the door and make them feel at home.”

Tara says a family recently transferred their prescriptions to Middletown Pharmacy because a large chain said it would take a week to get an antibiotic. The physician sent a new prescription to Middletown and the patient had their medication within an hour.

“They were so thankful [because] they felt the worst they had felt in a long time,” Tara says. “We saw the patient again in a week, and they were just so happy that we were able to take such good care of them even though they never filled with us before.”

The Schneiders also use social media to promote their pharmacy, posting about what is happening in the pharmacy each week and/or month. For example, February is American Heart Month, so the pharmacy staff decorated the windows with Valentine’s Day hearts and a large sign reading, “Heart health starts here.” They aim to bring awareness to the importance of regular monitoring of hemoglobin A1c and lipids to heart health and longevity.

Giving back to the community is important to the Schneiders. They are involved in the local chamber of commerce, which helps them meet and connect with other local business owners. They offer monthly wellness services such as vaccination clinics to the LTC facilities they service and seminars on sleep health awareness, fall prevention, heart health, and immune health.

“We want to be more than just pill planners,” Tara says. “The goal is to take our services to the patients. Our LTC patients can’t drive, so we deliver the services we are talking about in the pharmacy to their residences. We are on-site, meeting our patients and answering their questions.”