ATLANTA — Prescriptions to your door: It’s convenient. And it can be a life-saver, especially if you don’t live near a pharmacy.
Two retail giants are investing more in same day delivery and plan to start same day delivery of prescriptions in Georgia in 2025.
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Rod Hanson gets the medication he needs in the mail through Veterans Affairs.
“When I’m running low in my vial, right there, I just call them and I get it within three or four days,” he said.
CVS, Rite Aid, and Walgreens deliver too. But they’ve all experienced turmoil lately: closing or announcing plans to shut down hundreds of stores.
Enter Amazon and Walmart.
“We think we’re building Pharmacy 3.0.,” said Dr. Vin Gupta, Amazon Pharmacy’s chief medical officer. “By 10 a.m., if you check out and say, ‘I want my insulin,’ by, reasonably, between 2 and 4 p.m. that same day ... it’ll be… at your doorstep.”
The company plans to offer “same day” delivery in Georgia, but it won’t happen in the until mid-2025 at the earliest.
As for Walmart, it is already delivering drugs in six states and is adding Georgia in January.
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“Nearly half of U.S. counties have some version of a pharmacy desert … where a brick-and-mortar facility is say, outside a 10-mile radius of a dense community and a lot of people are not able to, especially as you get older, navigate that commute. And it’s part of the reason why 30% of the people don’t refill their scripts on time,” Gupta said.
So, the way he sees it, same-day delivery means patients staying on their meds and avoiding bigger problems later.
Amazon and Walmart are legitimate companies, but officials warn that you should still be careful buying medications online.
The FDA says a legitimate online pharmacy:
- Won’t dispense medicines without a prescription
- Has a physical address and phone number
- Is certified. You can check at https://nabp.pharmacy/
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