Rite Aid expects to close or sell off all five of its Vermont locations as the struggling national pharmacy chain goes through bankruptcy proceedings.
In court filings, the company has said it plans to wind down operations at the more than 1,200 drugstores it operates nationwide in the coming months. Among those are locations in Bethel, Brattleboro, Randolph, Springfield and Windsor.
According to court documents, Rite Aid is actively trying to auction off rather than immediately shutter many of its locations, and it’s possible some or even all of the Vermont locations could remain open under the auspices of another pharmacy brand.
For now, Rite Aid has said, locations will stop taking on new retail inventory while transferring prescriptions to other nearby pharmacies when possible as the company attempts to sell off its assets.
“It’s all very uncertain,” said Sandy Rosa, executive director of the Vermont Pharmacists Association. “It’s really kind of frightening. This is not good for the people of Vermont for pharmacy access.”
Indeed, if the Vermont locations do not change hands, the resulting closures could have dire implications for parts of the state that already have severely limited access to the medicine and health care provided by pharmacies.
Pharmacy closures can create “pharmacy deserts” or areas without easy access to pharmaceutical care. In one recent nationwide analysis, communities in rural areas are considered pharmacy deserts if the nearest pharmacy is 10 miles away or more. In urban areas, pharmacy deserts are square-mile areas without drugstores.
Currently, the Rite Aid drugstores are the only pharmacies operating in both Bethel and Windsor, and the locations’ closure meaning both towns would likely become pharmacy deserts.
“Patients are going to be really up a creek, as it were,” Rosa said. “It’ll take a while in terms of a transition, but it’s going to be fraught.”
As Vermont’s independent pharmacies have shuttered their doors and large chains like CVS and Walgreens have closed thousands of locations nationwide, pharmacy access is becoming a struggle in more of the state.
According to the state’s Board of Pharmacy, 28 pharmacies permanently closed in Vermont between 2019 and 2024. And already this year, Walgreens has shuttered at least three drugstores in Burlington, Newport, and Montpelier.
