Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 17, 1993 TAG: 9308170285
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DANIEL HOWES STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Retired Persons Services Inc. - which last year filled some 8 million prescriptions nationwide - will occupy the Sears Telecatalog Center offices on Thirlane Road Northwest. The center closed on Saturday.
RPS, based in Alexandria, intends to funnel all its telephone orders to "consultants" based in Roanoke, many of whom could well be drawn from 700 part-time workers idled by the Sears closing.
The company already has agreed to hire seven former Sears managers to run its teleservice operation, including the manager who opened the Sears operation in 1988. A statement issued by President Brian Frid said RPS intends to hire "many of the experienced employees who became available when the Sears center closed."
But the company's senior vice president for sales and marketing, Ned Haley, would not say how many jobs RPS intends to bring to its new Roanoke operation. "There's a lot of behind-the-scenes work to be done yet."
RPS operates 11 pharmacies nationwide, nine of which take telephone orders. The company chose the Roanoke facility - which it will lease from First Union Corp. - for its experienced management team and large part-time work force left by the Sears center.
"Prescription drugs is what we're in," Haley said. "That represents about 80 percent of our sales."
RPS - serving AARP members, retired military officers and members of the Epilepsy Foundation - is part of a fast-growing segment of the nation's prescription drug business: mail order.
In 1990, mail-order prescriptions accounted for 10 percent - about $2 billion - of the drugs dispensed nationwide, according to a recent study cited in a magazine published by the National Association of Retail Druggists.
By 1995, mail-order prescriptions are expected to account for 18.5 percent - $7.6 billion - of the nation's $41 billion prescription drug market.
"The trend is more toward being required by your insurance carrier to buy your drugs from a mail-order company," said Ed Buchholz, chief executive officer of Thriftee Group Inc., a Roanoke-based mail-order drug and medical supply company catering to diabetics.
"Big mail-order companies are given tremendous discounts by the drug companies - up to 90 percent [off] of what everybody else pays," he said, describing his own company's 40 percent annual growth rate.
Founded in 1959, RPS offers brand-name and generic drugs, some of which can save customers 50 percent of the cost paid at neighborhood pharmacies, according to an RPS catalog. Invoices are sent with orders, which carry a $1 shipping charge - whatever the size of the order.
Independent pharmacists say mail-order operations threaten to drive them out of business because mail-order houses receive deep discounts from drug companies, which then are passed on to customers.
RPS, in a brochure titled "Mail Service Pharmacies - Separating Fact from Fiction," counters that "mail service pharmacies don't threaten anything. They merely offer another option for consumers and healthy competition for other pharmacists."
RPS is a nonprofit corporation charged with administering pharmacy service that is "sponsored, but not owned or controlled, by [the] AARP," according to company documents. As such, the company declines to reveal its sales or profits.
by CNB