Falk's Pharmacy Buys Newman's, Installs Robotic Pharmacist

By Jennifer Simonson
Duluth Budgeteer News
September 2, 2001

Sara is never late to work. She works from store opening to store closing and never has a day off. Sara fills prescriptions at Newman's Pharmacy in Lincoln Park all day, every day, with a 99.7% accuracy rate. Sara never complains and never needs a break. Sara is a robot.

Newman's new owner, Steve Preston, owner of the Falk's Pharmacies chain, installed the drug-dispensing robot because the shortage of pharmacists nationally and locally made it impossible for him to fill the needed position. "The pharmacist shortage that's out there right now is huge," Preston said. "It's all over the nation. The United States is almost 20,000 pharmacists short right now. Minnesota is short 500 pharmacists."

The Falk's chain of six stores in the Northland, five in Duluth and one in Superior, has two openings for pharmacists. Preston hasn't been able to find qualified applicants. "Sara," named after a Newman's pharmacy technician who recently moved from the area, will fill one of the positions.

"It was needed for staffing," Preston said. "This store is very busy, and we needed another pharmacist, and there were no pharmacists available. It's not taking the place of a human being, it's taking the place of a human being that doesn't exist."

The robotic pharmacist counts pills, fills vials, and labels the prescriptions. Two hundred of the most common medications are loaded into compartments in the robot. A barcode for a particular prescription is scanned on a computer by a technician. A robotic arm picks the correct medication, picks the right-size vial, then, using a laser, it counts out the correct number of pills and fills the vial.

"It's more accurate than we are, by far," Preston said. "It is 99.7 percent accurate. The only mistake it makes is in counting. Sometimes it will count two as one. There are few drugs it has trouble counting, but drug-wise it is 100 percent accurate. It does not make mistakes."

The first day Sara was in use at Falk's-Newman's, the pharmacy filled 350 prescriptions. Of that, 220 were filled by the robot. The machines are designed to fill 50-60 percent of all prescriptions. It does not handle liquid or other types of medications. Preston is happy with the performance of his new robot and plans to install more of them in Falk's Pharmacies in the area.

"It's taking the manual part out of dispensing," he said. "It's taking the chaos out of pharmacy. That's the nice part. The second one is going into Lignell's next week at Mariner Mall. We'll have them everywhere eventually. I'm very impressed with the way they work."

Preston says the acquisition of Newman's Pharmacy will likely be the last purchase Falk's Pharmacies will make in the area. "Now we have north, south, east, and west," Preston said. "The way we're hooked up is very unique. Whether you're in Kenwood, Lakeside, Woodland, or Superior (and now Lincoln Park) I can tell where you've gotten everything. The computers are all tied together, which is very unique in pharmacies. It's very easy for the public to move around."

Ken Newman's father and uncle opened Newman's Pharmacy in 1923. Newman and a partner bought the business in 1964, and he has run it ever since. But when his second pharmacist moved away in early 2000 and he could not find a replacement, running the business became increasingly difficult.

"From the time she left, this turned into a seven-day-a-week job, a 75-hours-a-week job and remained at that. There wasn't enough time in my life seven days a week to run this store. I would go home so frustrated I could just jump out of my skin," he said.

Newman isn't ready to retire just yet. He will stay on as pharmacist at the store.

Preston says the strength of a chain like Falk's will help Falk's-Newman's remain competitive. "The bigger we've gotten the easier it's gotten," Preston said. "It's very hard for the one-man stores, which Ken was. Very difficult. It had gotten to the point where it was pretty impossible to run by himself."