Apothecare owner says new location provides just the right medicine
Apothecare owners and pharmacists Walt Lizza and his wife, Amy, recently relocated the pharmacy from South Union Township to Morgantown Street in Uniontown.
Bethany Wolfe, a pharmacy student intern, compounds an oral antibiotic antifungal pain reliever on a hotplate. The hotplate uses magnets to stir the liquid prescription.
From left, pharmacy technician Denise Campbell, pharmacy student intern Rebecca Yarish and Mary Beth Robowski busily work to fill prescriptions for customers at Apothecare Pharmacy in Uniontown.
Compounding supplies are shown in the compounding room of Apothecare Pharmacy in Uniontown. It is the only local pharmacy to compound or make prescriptions in the area.
Walter Lizza notices the puzzled expressions on the faces of people who visit his Apothecare Pharmacy at its new location in Uniontown for the first time.
What they don’t see is the cause of their bewilderment.
“Everything here is strictly medicinal. No charcoal grills. No lawn chairs,” Lizza said. “It’s strictly professional. We try to limit over-the-counter stuff. Our specialty is prescriptions.”
He ran his business the same way at its original location on McClellandtown Road in South Union Township, which he opened in 1990.
Relocating to the city shocked some people, but the high-profile location at the corner of Morgantown and Berkeley streets has attracted new customers since it opened on April 15 and resulted in the hiring of three additional employees.
“People were shocked that I was actually doing it,” Lizza said about the decision to move the pharmacy.
Business growth and the planned expansion of McClellandtown Road into a four-lane road led to the decision, he said.
“We definitely outgrew our old location,” Lizza said. “Business has definitely increased since coming to this location.”
Better access might be among the reasons. The parking lot is larger and has three entrances — Morgantown Street, Berkeley Street and a rear alley.
“I just thought it was a fabulous spot on the corner,” he said.
The property also has a place in Lizza’s heart.
It was the site of a Winky’s Hamburgers restaurant where his mother took him when he was a boy.
“This was a Winky’s when I was a kid. We lived nearby. My mom and I used to walk here and get hamburgers when I was 6 or 7 years old,” Lizza said. “So this building has sentimental value to me.”
He said he wishes his parents were still alive to see what he was done with the building.
After Winky’s closed, the property changed hands among several different banks. Second National Bank of Masontown was first. Parkvale Bank was next, followed by First National Bank. The building was vacant for a couple years before Lizza began converting it into his new pharmacy early this year.
“We gutted it. It was a lot of work. We took it down to the walls and started from scratch,” Lizza said,
Renovation work included building an interior stone wall, which was designed to make customers feel comfortable, and higher-end building materials in the work area, which were intended to create a comfortable environment for the staff, he said.
The new building is 1,000 square feet larger than the McClellandtown Road building, which he plans to lease.
The same services provided at the old location are available at the new building. They include drive-through service, delivery, compounding and the Laurel Long-term Care Pharmacy.
“Compounding is when we have to make medication from scratch,” Lizza said.
Lizza said he and compounding technician Keith Jones took classes offered by the Professional Compounding Centers of America to hone their skills, but any pharmacist can compound medicine.
Medication that pharmacies don’t have in stock or don’t have in the strength needed for a patient’s prescription must be compounded, he said. The pharmacy has a machine that produces capsules for compounded medicines.
“When pharmacists started out, that’s all we did. That was before the advent of drug companies,” Lizza said.
The long-term care pharmacy is a second, closed-door pharmacy within Apothecare that specializes in medication for patients in personal care or assisted-living centers. It has a dedicated pharmacist and staff and a separate license, he said.
Lizza has 19 employees, including six pharmacists and a three-person staff working at the Apothecare inside the Shop ‘N Save on Walnut Hill Road in South Union Township. His wife, Amy Lizza, is one of the pharmacists.
The entire staff concentrates on personal service and treats people who come to the pharmacy like patients instead of customers, he said.
“We wanted to bring that back. I’m old school,” Lizza said.