Two Watonga pharmacies – Swann Pharmacy and City Pharmacy – are changing ownership. Mark Kourt previously owned the two businesses, along with Thomas and Canton drug stores. He has agreed to sell the Watonga businesses to longtime employees Zac and Rexann Brack.
Kourt said he has had offers on the business over the years but chose to sell to the couple instead.
“I wanted to put it with somebody like Zac’s hands so it would be taken care of. Those good relationships will continue,” Kourt said. “I felt like it was time to step back from that oversight role and just work as a pharmacist.”
With that said, Brack hopes the customers won’t be upset when faced with the change.
“I hope it’s seamless,” he said. “It’s important that they (customers) know this isn’t a corporate takeover. This is a small town family that owned it all along and now it’s just another small town family that will own it.”
It's very common for people to be nervous or concerned about people keeping jobs, the consistency of services, access to their prescriptions and ease of communications, Brack said, but there are plans in place to alleviate these fears and concerns. The faces customers are used to seeing at Swann’s Pharmacy will not disappear. They will move over to City, along with the files and information from the customers.
“The information should transfer without the customers needing to do anything,” Brack said. And Jordan Richey as well as Kourt will also be working at City, Kourt part-time and Richey with very similar hours to what she works at Swann now.
“I will probably get my comeuppance now,” Kourt laughed. He was the ‘boss man’ for many years to Brack’s employee status, and now the tables are turned.
Delivery to Geary, the original home of Swann Pharmacy, will continue. As the consolidation is pursued the number of days and what days deliveries will be made will solidify.
And as the kinks are worked out of the system, Brack plans to improve services available to the customers. He wants to focus on prescription counseling where customers come in for a short appointment to go over their prescriptions so that they understand fully what the medications are for and how to properly take them.
“And we plan to offer more services like medication therapy management, more stream-lined immunizations of more vaccines and more compounding of drugs so our patients don't have to leave town as much for specialty prescriptions,” he said. The business will continue doing all it can to help customers get what they need locally.
So why consolidate, and why now?
Brack said he had wanted to own the store here in Watonga for a long time and decided if he ever got the chance to own it, he would take it. There were offers to work for a hospital pharmacy in Oklahoma City.
“But I wanted to continue to work in my hometown,” he grinned. “I like helping my people. That’s why I still live here.” The most exciting part of consolidating the stores, he said, is that he will now get to see customers from Swann’s that he has helped there more often.
Brack went to a Christian academy in Watonga and is a 2004 graduate of SWOSU pharmacy school. He also serves as one of the pastors at Oasis Church on Main Street. His wife, RexAnn, is a graduate of Watonga High School and is a pharmacy technician, as are two of the couple’s four children. A third is in pharmacy school at Weatherford.
“It’s truly a partnership,” he said. “I wouldn’t be doing this if my wife weren’t here working beside me.”
One of the concerns about moving everything to the City Pharmacy building is parking. But by keeping the drive through moving smoothly, in part by using text or phone notification of customers when their prescriptions are ready for pickup. If the window is busy, curbside handoff is available. Another technology is the RX2GO phone app. Customers can send refill requests and more through the app and won’t have to wait for someone to answer the phone during business hours or leave a voice message if the shop is closed.
The biggest challenge, Brack said, is the prevalence of Pharmacy Benefits Managers, or PBMs.
These are insurance companies who contract pharmacies. They offer 'take it or leave it' nonnegotiable terms forcing independent pharmacies to lose money on various prescriptions and face lower rates of reimbursement. This makes prescription volume and customer retention vitally important to keeping hometown pharmacies viable, Brack said.
He urges any customer who has been pressured into changing pharmacies by their insurance carrier to let the pharmacy know. They can help contact the state insurance commissioner’s office and file a complaint.
But most of all, the new owners at City Pharmacy want to continue to serve the people of Watonga. They will work with almost all insurance providers and do their best to get the lowest cash prices for prescriptions. They can beat most chain store prices and if they cannot, they don’t get offended if customers choose to transfer the prescriptions.