CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) – A new nonprofit pharmacy is helping fill a need created when the First Avenue Hy-Vee closed in Cedar Rapids last year.
The Eastern Iowa Health Center pharmacy held its grand opening on Thursday. CEO Joe Lock says this new $1.5 million pharmacy is desperately needed by the community the nonprofit serves. 70% of its patients live below the federal poverty level.
“Well, we got this 30 page needs assessment. It made you either want to cry or pull out your checkbook or both. I mean, there was just so much need,” says Lock. “And then it was only exacerbated and really put forward when the pharmacy closed at Hy-Vee June 26th of last year.” The pharmacy, like all EIHC’s services, is open to everyone in the community.
The pharmacy is using state-of-the-art technology, including $500,000 worth of robots. The goal is to give staff more time to focus on helping and educating patients.
One of those robots is McKesson’s CountMate™, a next-generation, robotically automated vial-filling system that helps with prescription dispensing. EIHC is one of the first three pharmacies in the United States to implement this technology, and the first pharmacy in the Midwest to implement this patient-forward solution.
CountMate™ can dispense a fully labeled, patient-specific prescription every 20 seconds. With dual robotic arms, biometric security, and real-time canister replenishment, the system ensures precise medication handling while significantly reducing patient waiting times.
“A lot of our patients don’t speak English, so it allows us to do more education with the patients in their native language, just spending a little more time at the pharmacy counter rather than counting out the prescriptions yourself,” says Dr. Aaron Sackett, the Pharmacist in Charge at the Eastern Iowa Health Center Pharmacy.
This building, on the corner of 4th Avenue and 12th Street, will also open an Urgent Care on November 13th, putting everything a patient might need all in one place.
The Eastern Iowa Health Center also plans to open a Vision Center early in 2026. It’s on track to serve more than 70,000 patients this year.
“I am proud to say the EIHC Pharmacy is open for business,” said Joe Lock, President & CEO of EIHC. “I strongly encourage the public to utilize EIHC’s pharmacy to support local business and the patients we serve. Your prescription co-pay is a contract between you and your insurer. It doesn’t matter where you shop—with one significant exception: If you shop at CVS, any profit goes to Rhode Island. The same for Walgreens, except any profit goes directly to Illinois. Please consider helping your friends and neighbors by choosing EIHC. Call the EIHC Pharmacy at (319) 200-5140 and our expert pharmacists will handle the transfer of your prescriptions.”
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