Solutions Pharmacy’s 28-member staff continues to grow to better serve its customers.Solutions Pharmacy compounding specialists take the angst out of growing older with bioidentical hormones, but even pet owners will appreciate the customization skills of these magic medicine makers.
“So many people tell us that we’ve changed their lives,” said co-owner Jeri Talley, especially in the realm of love and marriage. She said bioidentical hormones are so successful with her female patients going through menopause that their husbands can’t help but try it, too.
“They’ve got more energy, mental clarity, more sex drive,” Talley said. “Men are coming in saying, ‘I want to feel as good as my wife.'” She said men’s andropause sets in more gradually than women’s menopause, but the toll it takes is the same. “A lot of men don’t realize that,” she said. “If you live longer but don’t have any quality of life, it’s not that great of a thing.”
She said Solutions Pharmacy’s bioidentical hormones match the structure of the body’s natural hormones and don’t make patients sick like synthetics can, some of which are made with horse urine.
Talley and her late husband, Don, bought Solutions Pharmacy in 1996. She’s a registered nurse who’s worked in hospitals for more than 20 years and in pharmacies for more than 25. She said her nursing experience gives her an “in” with her physician customers and patient customers alike.
“I can talk their language,” she said, which probably plays no small part in the Highway 58 office’s national influence. Timeless bombshell Suzanne Somers’ doctors have worked with the local office’s staff, and the American Medical Review named Solutions Pharmacy The Nation’s Experts in Bioidentical Hormones.
Co-owner and pharmacist Tom Beard said he also helps patients who have allergies to drugs touted by pharmaceutical companies. Usually their problem lies in the inactive ingredients like food coloring or lactose, an oft-used filler. “We can compound it so that it’s not going to have those inactive ingredients,” he said.
Beard said even pets who won’t swallow pills and their owners can benefit from the customization of compounding. He can produce a medicated ointment that owners rub in a cat’s ears to be absorbed or on their noses to be licked off. “It just makes it a lot easier for the owner to give medication to the animal,” he said.
Solutions Pharmacy was founded in 1960 as Lakeside Pharmacy by Charlie Armstrong, a compounding pioneer who still lives in Chattanooga and fosters national continuing education programs and a support network. Solutions Pharmacy is involved with it all. “I don’t think [most people] realize the entrepreneurship that Charlie Armstrong had,” Talley said. “He’s probably one of the smartest men in the nation. We were fortunate to work with him; we still are lucky.”
Custom compounding is just one service that sets Solutions Pharmacy apart.Talley’s son, co-owner Josh Talley, head of the compounding department, pointed out that compounding was “the only method around until the 1950s. Thousands of years before that, compounding was all there was.”
Despite big changes in the pharmaceutical industry over the last few decades, Jeri Talley said she’s thankful to be thriving when many businesses like hers are struggling. “We feel like it’s because it’s in our hearts to help others,” she said. “A lot of it is a God thing, and that’s important to me.”
Solutions Pharmacy is thriving so well, in fact, that workers are just breaking ground on a “very much needed” new building off Little Debbie Parkway in Ooltewah, set to be move-in ready by January or February 2013. At almost 8,000 square feet, the new space will be double the size of the current building.
The office’s staff of 28 continues to grow by leaps and bounds. The new building will have modern lab stations and more room for consultations with patients, warehousing for ever-expanding out-of-state shipping, and conference rooms for seminars, lectures and continuing education for staff. Solutions Pharmacy will sponsor a training seminar for physicians April 27-28, its annual spring seminar always held in Chattanooga.
“We’re always proud to bring physicians here because we think Chattanooga is just a very nice area,” Jeri Talley said. “What you’re teaching is a big draw, but also the city itself.”