When the East Boston Neighborhood Health Center built its Maverick Square facility a decade ago it came with numerous amenities like a cafe, eyeglass store prescriptions and, like EBNHC’s Gove Street location, a full service pharmacy for Health Center patients.
However, the in-house pharmacy in Maverick Square was bought out by CVS and closed for about a year until the Health Center decided to buy it back.
The good news is, you don’t have to be a patient of the Health Center in order to have your prescriptions filled in Maverick Square according to head pharmacist Carla Petruccelli.
“The pharmacy was closed temporarily because CVS had purchased it,” Petruccelli explained. “Until about a year ago the pharmacy was closed but the Health Center was able to purchase it back and reopen it. The biggest difference between the Gove Street pharmacy and the Maverick Square pharmacy is that Maverick offers a retail side, which is beneficial to people living in the neighborhood.”
Petruccelli said at Gove Street a patient has to be seen by a primary care physician, get a prescription in-house and then get that prescription filled at the Gove Street pharmacy.
“At Maverick, besides having a clinical pharmacy for EBHC patients we also have a retail side now,” she said. “So basically, as long as you have a legitimate prescription from a doctor and you have insurance, you can fill it on that retail side.”
Petrucelli, who worked under the tutelage of Harry Ofilos at Brown’s Pharmacy in Winthrop for two decades until Ofilos passed away and the old-school neighborhood pharmacy was purchased by CVS, said the retail side at Maverick opened last fall and wants to spread the word.
“There’s a lot of people moving into the Maverick area and could benefit from a local pharmacy that they can walk to,” she said. “Our pharmacy is run like a well oiled machine because you have anywhere from four to six pharmacists during a 12 hour day and anywhere from 10 to 15 technicians. So we have adequate people at each station. We’re producing between six and seven thousand prescriptions a week. So I think we are actually in the top 10 pharmacies in the New England area. The volume is crazy. It’s crazy. But it’s so efficient.”
The convenient pharmacy is right on street level in the first floor of the Health Center’s Maverick Square building and is open Monday through Thursday from 8 am to 8 pm, Fridays from 8 am to 6 pm and Saturdays from 9 a. To 2 pm.
“We are also offering mail order delivery as well for prescriptions,” said Petruccelli. “It’s through the US Postal Service and takes anywhere from two to five business days but it’s free of charge. We would set you over the phone and you can leave your insurance and credit card information for payment processing and then we would mail it out to you. We just started doing this about five or six months ago at Gove Street and it’s been very successful so we decided to add this service to Maverick as well and it seems to be doing very well here.”