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COEUR D'ALENE-Brian Jorgensen owns or has an interest in six Medicine Man Pharmacy outlets in Kootenai County, but despite his apparent success, the longtime pharmacist has a contingency plan.
"I can fill 30 prescriptions an hour by myself," Jorgensen jests, "If I can make a dollar a prescription, I guess I can make a pretty decent living."
It's unlikely, however, that Jorgensen will have to resort to his backup plan.
His Medicine Man Pharmacy chain, which he founded in 1978 with a single store at 1114 Ironwood Drive here, now has six outlets within an eight-mile radius of Coeur d'Alene. The company is poised to enter Washington state with a new store at Liberty Lake that's scheduled to open in June.
Moreover, despite competition from national drug-store chains and mail-order pharmacies and a continual squeeze in insurance reimbursements, the Medicine Man pharmacies are "very, very busy," Jorgensen says. "Even in that type of market, we've obviously grown."
The six outlets now together employ about 55 people, and each store fills roughly 1,000 prescriptions a week, he says.
The chain's first expansion came in 1984, when Jorgensen put together a franchise agreement With Don Smith, a pharmacist who worked for him, to open a Medicine Man outlet in Post Falls, called Medicine Man West. Later, Barry Feely, another pharmacist who worked for Jorgensen, opened the chain's first grocery-store branch-Medicine Man Northinside a Super-1Foods in Coeur d'Alene. Now, Smith owns a second franchise in Post Falls, called Medicine Man Southwest, and Feely owns two others: Medicine Man Prairie, in Hayden Lake, and Medicine Man Hayden.
Jorgensen says he has some kind of interest in each of those five outlets in addition to his interest...