A new try at an old service: drug store deliveries

Ken Shobola isn't afraid to buck trends.

And that's pretty much what the Tampa pharmacist is doing with his new business venture: an independent drug store that offers home delivery of prescriptions.

Shobola is president of a company that opened Kenaday Medical Clinic on W Waters Avenue in Tampa in June. The clinic has four doctors' practices and an inhouse drug store that's filling about 100 prescriptions a day. About half are picked up by patients and the rest are delivered at no charge to their homes.

Shobola, who financed his new business from savings, said he's able to compete on price with major drug chains, and he's negotiated contracts with major insurers. Most customers at the Tampa location are on Medicaid, he said.

Shobola realized that sick people didn't appreciate waiting around for their pills while he was working as a pharmacist for giant Eckerd Corp. He said he talked the Clearwater chain into letting him deliver drugs to customers at his Tampa store who requested the service. That service has since been discontinued.

(An Eckerd spokeswoman said home delivery is available in a limited number of stores, based on market demographics. Five Eckerd stores in Pinellas County offer the service; it is not available at any Hillsborough County Eckerd.)

"I just saw lots of opportunities in terms of personal service," said Shobola, who was with Eckerd for about eight years.

Shobola's group has gone one step further with personalized service at its second clinic in Kissimmee. That location, which attracts a good number of ailing tourists, sends its doctors on house calls to hotels.

"Europeans are used to sitting in the comfort of their own homes and being treated," said Shobola, who studied in England. "Here in the U.S., a lot of patients get stressed out with the delivery of health care."

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