ALEXANDRIA, Va. (March 23, 2022) – The National Community Pharmacists Association is pleased to announce that Avant Pharmacy and Wellness Center in Charlotte, N.C., has earned the 2022 NCPA Innovation Center Excellence Award for Best Internal Modification. This is the fifth year of the NICE Awards competition, which was created to recognize pharmacies for their efforts to enhance their value, promote their services, and better serve their communities. The NICE Awards are sponsored by RedSail Technologies, LLC.
“Congratulations to Avant Pharmacy and Wellness Center for earning the NICE Award for Best Internal Modification,” says NCPA Innovation Center President Kurt Proctor. “The NICE Awards spotlight the best of community pharmacy branding and marketing — the innovations and redesigns that have made promotions more effective and patients' experiences more rewarding. Amina Abubakar and her team did a great job in turning this building into a sleek facility that’s not only visually appealing but provides patients with valuable health care services.”
When Amina Abubakar opened Rx Clinic and Wellness in 2009, it provided services for specific types of patients, mostly underserved and primarily on Medicaid. In the following years, Rx Clinic began offering services that were increasingly cutting edge such as genetic testing and screenings for various disease states. Eventually it became apparent that the pharmacy needed to move and acquire more space so it could continue expanding into clinical offerings.
When a Rite-Aid closed, Abubakar found several different physician providers in the area who were interested in sharing the space. Abubakar completed the purchase in the summer of 2020 and began renovations in early 2021. The building is 11,500 square feet, divided between the pharmacy and medical offices. The new space, now known as Avant Pharmacy and Wellness Center, opened in August 2021.
“We are blessed to have not only a brand-new building but also a completely redesigned blueprint that features not only a front end that has increased 2-1/2 times, but also a variety of service rooms that afford our clinical pharmacists the opportunity to practice at the top of their license,” Abubakar says.
The pharmacy’s products and services include standard retail prescriptions; education/disease management; preventative care; patient compliance packaging; durable medical equipment; free delivery; wellness center with various wellness packages and services including weight loss and IV hydration; and COVID-19 testing, antibody treatment and vaccinations.
“We kept saying we were a hidden gem in Charlotte, and we just needed a physical location that matched our vision and ideas and all of our services,” Abubakar says. “Everything we ever envisioned, it’s now a reality.”
###
Founded in 1898, the National Community Pharmacists Association is the voice for the community pharmacist, representing nearly 19,400 pharmacies that employ approximately 215,000 individuals nationwide. Community pharmacies are rooted in the communities where they are located and are among America’s most accessible health care providers. To learn more, visit www.ncpa.org.
