KB Brown’s phone hasn’t stopped ringing since Walgreens shut its W. Broadway store last year, leaving one pharmacy to serve 67,000 residents in the north Minneapolis area where he lives and runs his graphics design business.
With Walgreens gone — and CVS shutting four other area stores — Brown, at least three times a week, transports employees, relatives and older neighbors to pharmacies in Robbinsdale or other suburbs so they can get their medications.
“It’s hard. Many of them are not mobile,” Brown said. “When I was younger, we didn’t have to leave the North Side for anything. We had three grocery stores, we had clothing stores, we had multiple pharmacies. As we sit here now, we have one grocery store, one pharmacy.”
North Minneapolis joins a growing number of “pharmacy deserts” rapidly dotting the state and nation as small and large pharmacies close up shop, leaving people with few options to quickly access prescription medicines. The problem is expected to get worse as the nation’s two pharmacy giants continue to downsize. CVS, which closed 600 U.S. stores between 2021 and 2023, said it would close 300 more this year as leases end. On Oct. 15, Walgreens announced a plan to close 1,200 unprofitable stores, starting with 500 in 2025.
A half-million Minnesotans live in pharmacy deserts, according to a report issued earlier this year by the state Department of Health. “Many more live in areas that are at risk of becoming pharmacy deserts with the closure of a single pharmacy,” the report said.
CVS and Walgreens have not disclosed most locations slated for closure, but Minnesota residents like Brown say they are nervous. Areas like his can ill afford more losses.
While pharmacists, drug companies and insurance middlemen — called pharmacy benefits managers — blame one another for the problem, the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) estimates that more than one-third of residents in Minneapolis, St. Paul and the first-ring suburbs are in pharmacy deserts.
The number of independently owned pharmacies in Minnesota has plunged from 478 to 156 in the past two decades, according to the Minnesota Board of Pharmacy. Many of those left standing say they are operating at a loss and forced to find alternative revenue streams. Large chain stores have dwindled from 552 to 451 over that time.