Guardian Pharmacy of Orlando opened in 2017 with four employees and served 500 patients. Now a staff of 51 serves nearly 4,000 people.
They needed more space.
In January, the long-term care pharmacy moved a third of a mile down the road to a brand new 20,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility to accommodate its growth in demand for its services.
The pharmacy location is operated in the Oak Ridge area near where S. John Young Parkway meets Florida’s Turnpike. Guardian entered into a long-term lease for the new facility and was able to keep EastGroup Properties as their landlord. They worked with commercial real estate service provider Cushman & Wakefield to find the larger spot.
The pharmacy features a modern, open layout designed for collaboration across departments. The facility also includes tech-enabled continuing education rooms for pharmacy and community staff training.
“It allows us to continue to grow, with space to grow into, adding more people, and adding new tech,” said Alan Obringer, President of Guardian Orlando. “It’s all about the people that work here and the people we service. The bigger space allows us to serve more people and expand partnerships. The team is thrilled.”
Guardian’s is a long-term care pharmacy, which operates a different model than a traditional retail pharmacy. All of the patients served are residents of long-term care facilities like assisted living facilities, nursing homes, behavioral health centers and others, which are partners of Guardian.
All the prescriptions are filled at Guardian and then delivered to the partner facilities.
“The goal is healthy residents, which serves us like it serves the community,” Obringer said. “It helps keep a good quality of life, and the longer we can do that, it’s a win all the way around.”
Guardian’s service area in based in Orlando but stretches from Sarasota all the way across the state to Melbourne. But most of its 116 partner facilities are in the Central Florida region.
Obringer attributes the growth to the constantly growing retiree population in Florida, as well as Guardian’s commitment to taking the best possible care of residents.
“When I first started, I wanted to get into this to try to help people,” he said. “This growth is assigned to our commitment to the community. We will be here and here to try to help as many as we can.”
He said it’s also because of the growing awareness of the long-term pharmacy service model.
“A lot of people don’t know that long-term pharmacies even exist,” Obringer said. “People can’t walk into Guardian like (a traditional pharmacy) to get prescriptions. We’re getting people to know we’re out here. If people can’t get to a pharmacy, don’t have family who can go for them, or it’s not convenient, this is one less thing to worry about as they continue to get better.”
Although they provide all the prescriptions residents need, Guardian specializes in prescriptions that are complicated to make and get filled.
“If somebody gets sick and goes to the hospital, maybe they have pneumonia and they start an IV antibiotic. When they get discharged, they may have another two weeks of that antibiotic,” Obringer explained. “That’s where we come in.”
Guardian Pharmacy Services is one of the nation’s leading long-term care pharmacy services companies with 50 locations nationwide and eight in Florida. Guardian Orlando is locally owned and operated.
“As far as the services we provide and the care that we take of our residents, all that happens here in Orlando,” he said.
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