Buying and running community-focused pharmacies continues to bring big growth for Mission Viejo-based Pacific Pharmacy Group Inc.
Pacific Pharmacy specializes in pharmacies located in medical office buildings or near hospitals.
It’s bought nine and opened two on its own since it started in 2006.
The company consolidates new operations as part of a central network, bringing in its own managing pharmacists, and typically keeping most of the existing workers.
The strategy has worked for awhile now.
Pacific Pharmacy posted a 39.7% increase in sales to $40.6 million for the 12 months through June compared to two years ago.
That earned it the No. 62 spot on the Business Journal list of fastest-growing private companies based here (see related stories, pages 1, 3, 6; this section, list starting on page 41).
Two years ago, the company topped the list, posting a 6,944% increase on a much smaller base of sales.
Up to 11
It now has 11 pharmacies in Southern Cali-fornia, including locations in Garden Grove, Orange and Newport Beach.
Last year, it opened locations in Newport Beach and Los Angeles joining the roster of acquired operations.
Pacific Pharmacy’s role in the healthcare service chain has helped keep business on an even keel amid the economic uncertainty of recent years.
Its pharmacies mainly fill prescriptions, in contrast to larger retail operations of retailers such as Walgreen Co. of Chicago, Rhode Island-based CVS Caremark Corp. or Rite Aid Corp. of Camp Hill, Pa.
“People need their meds,” Pacific Phar-macy Chief Executive and cofounder Tom Pascoe said in an earlier interview.
Pascoe founded the company five years ago with Scott Tyree, its chief operating officer.
The business model calls for letting pharmacists take care of customers, with tasks such as billing and collections, buying, marketing, relations with doctors and other healthcare providers and regulatory compliance handled by its central office.
Competition
That helps the pharmacies compete with large chains that dominate the industry. It also allows the pharmacists to focus on their customers, according to the company.
Pacific Pharmacy has a key relationship with a large drug distributor with an Orange County history—AmerisourceBergen Corp. The Pennsylvania-based wholesaler bought Bergen Brunswig Corp., which was based in Orange, 10 years ago.
The company, which has 21 local workers, has promoted its pharmacies as more intimate, personalized alternatives to large chain drugstores.
They appeal to seniors and other regular patients who are likely to come into the pharmacies after visiting their doctors in the same medical office complex.
“We truly believe that the health of a community is well-served by having independent community pharmacies,” Pascoe said.
Pacific Pharmacy has tended to eschew acquisitions of struggling community pharmacies that need turning around.
But in 2008, it did buy a troubled pharmacy in northeastern San Diego County after regulators forced the prior owner to sell it after he was charged with excessive dispensing of painkillers, including to customers without prescriptions.
Pascoe told a local newspaper that the pharmacy had a long-term, successful business in a tight-knit community despite the prior owner’s alleged missteps.
Pacific Pharmacy is backed by Pacific Community Ventures LLC, a San Fran-cisco-based private equity firm. Pacific Community invested $3 million in the pharmacy operator at the end of 2007.
Pacific Pharmacy used that money for acquisitions and new openings.
