“I want [patients] to feel like they’re walking into my house,” Darius Russell says of Russell’s Pharmacy & Shoppe, the independent pharmacy that he has run with his wife, Terensia, since 2018. “We want people to feel like they’re a part of our family.”
Located at 2116 Angier Avenue in East Durham, the Russell’s pharmacy—with its homey small shop, lounge area, and “Health in The Community” mural—is indeed a far cry from the impersonal commercial space of a Harris Teeter or CVS.
But now, suffering financially from what advocates call “one of the gravest professional threats in the history of healthcare,” the pharmacy is set to close this month.
“We love being able to help the community,” Russell told the INDY, “but if we can’t really afford to stay here, can’t afford to pay our bills and keep food on our own table…this is not working and we can’t continue like this.”
Local pharmacies across the country are feeling the same pressure that pushed Russell’s Pharmacy & Shoppe out of business. In a recent report, the News and Observer reported that between January 2022 and July 2024, 100 community pharmacies in North Carolina closed.
Part of the squeeze comes from pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), the obscure intermediaries between pharmacies, insurers, and the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture the drugs.
A recent New York Times investigation found that PMBs are not paying independent drugstores enough to cover costs. “Small pharmacies,” the report read, “have little choice but to accept these lowball rates because the largest P.B.M.s control an overwhelming majority of prescriptions.”
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has also reported that PBMs associated with pharmacies have reimbursed the pharmacies that they’re associated with at higher rates than independent pharmacies. Late last month, the FTC filed a complaint against the three dominant companies with PMB units—CVS Health, Cigna, and UnitedHealth Group—over alleged anti-competitive practices that have inflated the cost of insulin.
Another recent federal change, meant to decrease consumer costs, essentially caused pharmacies to receive less money upfront from insurance companies. In trying to keep expensive drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy in stock, Russell’s was increasingly bearing more upfront costs than ever before.
The pharmacy’s closure will leave a gaping hole in a neighborhood that has come to rely on it.
Darius Russell graduated from UNC’s School of Pharmacy in 2006 and spent years working in the industry before he and Terensia decided to realize the longtime dream of opening a family pharmacy.
When they first started looking for a storefront, the couple knew they wanted it to be in East Durham.
“We saw that there was a huge need,” says Russell. “A lot of people who don’t have transportation don’t have anywhere that they can viably get to a pharmacy.”
Through a friend from church, the Russells learned about Self-Help Credit Union’s Angier Business and Children’s Center, an $11 million investment in the historic buildings in the heart of East Durham. One of the advisory committees had overwhelmingly decided that a pharmacy should go there.
“We feel like it was divine intervention,” says Russell of the opportunity.
East Durham, an area with a limited number of grocery stores, has been labeled a food desert for years. With Russell’s closing, it may also be a pharmacy desert. East Durham residents without transportation will have their pick of a pair of Walgreens—each over a mile away—or the independent Gurley’s on Main Street, about two miles away downtown. Upon closing, Russell’s will transfer its remaining patients to Gurley’s.
In its six years of being open, the personal touch of Russell’s pharmacy has not gone unnoticed in Durham. The pharmacy’s Instagram account has several hundred followers, and, especially in past years, has featured community information and health events.
Online reviews, often a space for disgruntled customers to post typo-ridden diatribes after a subpar experience, read like a dream for the pharmacy.
“This is a great pharmacy, and I’m so happy to have it in my neighborhood! I love that my pharmacist knows me by name and takes the time to help me with my medicines. Everyone who works in the shoppe is friendly and makes you feel like a real person and not just a number in the books,” wrote one customer in 2019.
“I can’t believe I’m excited about a pharmacy,” another review goes, “but this one is special.”
Terensia’s parents also worked at the pharmacy, delivering meds around the Bull City. And on their birthdays, patients would receive a voicemail of the Russells singing to them.
“I had one patient… who said, ‘Thank you, nobody else called me on my birthday,’” says Russell. “It does your heart good—this is the reason why we’re here.”
Russell’s Pharmacy’s last day of business will be Thursday, October 19.
Reach Reporter Chase Pellegrini de Paur at [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].
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