Custom Medicines Just the Prescription for Couple’s Pharmacy
Westlake Village businessman Tony Park was a rebellious youth, determined not to grow up to be a pharmacist like his father. In some ways he accomplished his goal, in some ways he didn’t.
While his father, Jae Park, continues to operate several traditional pharmacies in Los Angeles, Tony Park and his wife, Melissa Shubb Park, have opened the Park Compounding Pharmacy. Unlike the average pharmacy, Park Compounding sells medications customized to meet individual patient preferences and requirements.
The pharmacy lab and retail operation is in a 1,500-square-foot suite in the Westlake Office Park.
“My father owns several independent pharmacies, typical mom-and-pop corner drugstores, and I see where they’re headed,” Tony Park said. “I honestly don’t think the typical independent pharmacy can survive in the market these days with insurances and HMOs being the way they are. People who want to practice their own business have to go into some specialty.”
Like compounding pharmacies nationwide, the Parks’ venture is aimed at filling a niche in the prescription medication industry, offering alternatives to what the major drug companies manufacture for medical, dental and veterinary purposes.
Clients typically are those who have found little success with or prefer not to use standard prescription drugs and are looking for other options, Park said. Physicians and retail pharmacists refer patients who need medicines with uncommon dosages, strengths, flavors or other characteristics not available in the mass market.
“It could be the person who is . . . lactose intolerant, and a lot of medications have lactose as fillers,” Park said. “There are some people who are allergic to certain dyes.”
Jennifer Sargent, membership development coordinator for the International Academy of Compounding Pharmacies, said there is a growing awareness and demand for these specially designed medications, along with popular treatments of the day like Viagra and Natural Hormone Replacement Therapy.
The academy of compound pharmacists is a 1,200-member referral and educational organization that has seen its ranks nearly double since 1995.
“I believe compound pharmacies are growing in a huge way, if people can just understand it’s not just quack pharmacists taking drugs and mixing them together, it’s more of an art and a skill,” Sargent said. “Our more active members are ones who are older and have established relationships with patients and doctors. It takes a lot of money and time to invest into that, but it can be very lucrative for a pharmacist.”
As much as finding a profitable niche, Park said, the skill of compounding medications offers challenges that he and his wife were not finding elsewhere. Park was manager of a Walgreens pharmacy and his wife was a pharmacist with Sav-on Drugs.
“We both graduated from the University of Pacific, where we learned the basics of drug therapy as well as the mechanisms and physiology of the body,” he said. “When we worked in a retail setting, we didn’t use any of that--we were taking a drug manufactured by a drug manufacturer and repackaging it for patients.”
Park said his goal by the end of the pharmacy’s first year is to be filling 25 to 30 prescriptions a day. Eventually, he said, he would like to expand further into Ventura County.
