Today we’d like to introduce you to Tarek Elansary.
Hi Tarek, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Graduated from pharmacy school with a doctorate degree in 1998. First 16 years as a pharmacist, I practiced the traditional Western medicine way as I was trained in school. The last 10 years, in learning about compounding pharmacy has opened up my experience to many other types of medicine. These other medical approaches are much more rewarding and effective for the patients. Even the prescribers I work with mention they had the same exact feelings when they broadened their medical approach from traditional Western to functional medicine. I am so excited and interested in what I do and how I can continue to be of value to the community. I literally will spend at least 1 to 2 hours each morning feeding my brain with new information to better provide help to both the patients and prescribers. Compared to how I used to feel about my profession, where I was unmotivated by the monotony, not much else to learn about, and overall, not seeing that anyone was truly benefiting from these therapies. Conversely, I am always finding tons more to learn about and see how it is genuinely making a positive change in patients’ lives.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It wouldn’t be any fun if it was easy and smooth to start and grow a business. Very slow growth and financial fears were a constant struggle the first few years. Then prescription insurance companies and PBMs (pharmacy benefit managers) have cut the profit margins more every year on the retail prescriptions to where we are paid below our cost or a few cents above. This does not cover the cost that goes into filling a prescription at all. That is why Rite Aide filed for bankruptcy, and CVS and other big chains are closing many locations. We continue to cancel contracts with insurance companies and will likely not take any in the near future. Many of our patients are still wanting to pay out of pocket instead of going to the chains due to frustrations with the service they get there. This also has resulted in most independent pharmacies have gone out of business, forcing most patients to deal with the lack of customer service from the big chain pharmacies.
A more positive challenge is that now we are on year 10 and have realized we have outgrown the lab space we built out for our non-sterile compounds. We will actually be relocating to a unit directly upstairs from where we are now and build out the lab to handle a much higher volume. Which also means we will be needing to hire more staff. That has always been a struggle to hire new employees. Most small business are having the same issues with finding and retaining good employees.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next, you can tell us a bit more about your business.
We truly love specializing in non-sterile compounding pharmacy. This allows us to fill in all the gaps in between available medical options and therapies that exist. Big pharma generally makes meds that treat symptoms and require you to stay on them for life. They also limit the variations of doses and dosage forms. With compounding, we can make the dose and dosage form to fit a patient’s specific needs. What is much more interesting to me is the options that big pharma doesn’t get involved in, that actually treat the underlying cause and we see and hear the amazing outcomes. Patients and doctors alike are usually extremely thrilled at how well these therapy options work. I get calls or texts on my cell phone or work phone several times a day from physicians wondering what new therapies we have for a specific diagnosis. This is what keeps me studying every day to be able to continue meeting these challenges. I am honored by the words used to describe our service and value we provide to the community. Especially when a new physician calls and says they heard from a colleague all these amazing things about our pharmacy.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
We see that regular retail prescriptions will not be involved with insurance companies anymore due to underpayments that even the big chain pharmacies cannot survive with. So, hopefully, this will pull the industry away from the insurance companies and PBM’s greed and back to a fair fee for pharmacy services. I know that we will certainly be on a cash basis without any insurance involvement in the near future. For compounds, the FDA has been threatening to make restrictions on patients’ availability to bio-identical hormone replacement. This could be very harmful to many patients’ health. They are basing these threats on fraudulent studies that are being pushed on the FDA by big pharma. Unfortunately, if they do this, it would be catastrophic for the health of all these patients. For example, women in menopause are 8 times more likely to have heart disease and 4 times more likely to have dementia and or osteoporosis than breast cancer. This is just one example of all the health benefits we are providing to patients that get prescribed these hormones. I have actually given 2-hour webinars and lectures to physician organizations on all this data.
Contact Info:
- Website: carmelvalleypharmacy.com
