By Billy Cheung, Head of Pharmacy, Pharmasave
Community pharmacies are a familiar part of the Canadian retail landscape, but the role they play in their communities is much broader than many realize.
They are local businesses and employers, often with longstanding ties to the communities they serve. They are also increasingly important healthcare destinations as pharmacists take on a wider range of clinical services.
For many Canadians, however, the pharmacy is still primarily thought of as the place to fill a prescription or pick up an over-the-counter medication. That perception misses a much bigger story: community pharmacies contribute to both Canadians’ health and the strength of local economies.
Recent first-of-its-kind research commissioned by the Neighbourhood Pharmacy Association of Canada (NPAC) gives us a clearer picture of the scale of that contribution.
The findings include:
- Community pharmacy contributes nearly $23 billion annually to Canada’s economy.
- The sector supports more than 273,000 jobs and generates approximately $6.3 billion in annual tax revenues.
- Nearly two-thirds of Canada’s pharmacy locations are independently owned or banner pharmacies.
- Approximately 60 per cent of Canadians live within a one-kilometre walk of a pharmacy.
- In rural Canada, more than one in every 100 residents works in the pharmacy sector.
Those figures begin to show just how closely the economic and healthcare contributions of community pharmacy are connected. At the same time, the services pharmacies provide have expanded significantly. Depending on where you live, pharmacists can now assess and prescribe for common ailments, administer vaccines and injections, renew or adapt prescriptions and, in some jurisdictions, order laboratory tests.
They are also increasingly involved in supporting patients with chronic conditions. As extensively trained medication and immunization experts who are among the most accessible healthcare professionals in their communities, pharmacists are well-positioned to take on this broader role.
And as that role in healthcare expands, the local pharmacy is changing as a business too.
The value of making decisions close to home
Nearly two-thirds of Canada’s pharmacy locations are independently owned or banner pharmacies. That matters because, for independently owned pharmacies, local ownership puts decisions closer to the communities being served.
A pharmacist owner sees firsthand what patients and customers are asking for, where gaps in care may exist and which services are needed locally. They can then make decisions about where to invest and which services make sense for their community.
Healthcare needs aren’t the same everywhere, and neither are the solutions. We see that in the services being offered across the Pharmasave network.
At Cumberland Pharmasave in B.C., owner-pharmacist and women’s hormone consultant Kerri Moskal developed an innovative hormone-replacement therapy (HRT) clinic for women that has drawn patients from across Vancouver Island. As demand grew, she adapted the model by introducing after-hours group education sessions, followed by the option of a one-on-one call for personalized recommendations. Her work was recently recognized with the BC Pharmacy Association’s 2026 Excellence in Patient Care Award.
In Weyburn, Saskatchewan, Pharmasave is helping expand access to mental health care through the province’s Mental Health Medication Management Pharmacy Pilot Project. Working under a collaborative practice agreement with a local psychiatrist, participating pharmacists can initiate medications, adjust medications or dosages to optimize therapy, and discontinue medications
when appropriate. The model makes greater use of pharmacists’ expertise to provide patients with more timely, ongoing medication management in their community, while allowing the psychiatrist to focus more time on patients with complex needs and see more patients overall.
Across Nova Scotia, seven Pharmasave pharmacies are helping support broader health needs in their communities by running Community Pharmacy Primary Care Clinics as part of a provincial program. Through the clinics, pharmacists can assess and prescribe for conditions such as strep throat, pink eye and urinary tract infections, while also helping patients manage chronic diseases
including diabetes, asthma and COPD.
These are just a few examples of how independent pharmacist owners and community pharmacy teams are identifying gaps in care and helping improve access close to home.
At Pharmasave, we have a national footprint, but our pharmacies are deeply rooted in the communities they serve. Pharmacy owners are often local healthcare providers, employers and trusted members of their communities. That local connection matters from a retail and business perspective too: these are businesses making decisions about services and investments based on the needs they see firsthand.
Supporting local economies and communities
The connection between economic and healthcare well-being is particularly apparent in rural communities.
A community pharmacy can be both one of the most accessible healthcare destinations in town and an important local employer and longstanding business. According to NPAC’s report, more than one in every 100 rural residents works in the pharmacy sector.
In smaller communities, those roles are closely connected.
A pharmacy that identifies a local gap and adds a new healthcare service can help residents access care closer to home while continuing to support local employment and economic activity. And because pharmacist owners often live and work in the same communities as their patients and customers, they have a firsthand understanding of how local needs are changing.
There is an important continuity-of-care story here too.
Research cited in NPAC’s report shows that pharmacists in rural communities may see patients between 1.5 and 10 times more frequently than family physicians. They also tend to stay in their communities. Pharmacists remain in rural practice for an average of 15 years, compared with 11 years for family physicians.
Think about what that means in practice.
Over time, the local pharmacy can become a personalized hub of care. If you’ve been seeing the same pharmacist for years, they may know the medications you take, understand aspects of your health history and goals, recognize when something has changed and often know your family too.
That continuity matters. As pharmacists take on a broader role in healthcare, those longstanding relationships give them an opportunity to provide increasingly personalized support and identify needs that might otherwise go unnoticed.
This isn’t about pharmacists replacing family physicians, nurses or other healthcare professionals.
Good healthcare depends on different professionals working together and contributing their particular expertise. It’s about recognizing the healthcare capacity that already exists in our communities and making good use of it.
The local pharmacy has changed
At Pharmasave, we recently surpassed 900 pharmacies across Canada, many of which are independently owned by pharmacists who live and work in the communities they serve. Over the past year, pharmacists across our network completed more than 80,000 common ailment
assessments and provided health and medication support for nearly 88,000 new patients.
I suspect those numbers would surprise many Canadians. And that’s really the point.
Independent Pharmacy Day on August 31 is an opportunity to recognize the people behind independent pharmacies across Canada. It is also a timely moment to consider how significantly the role—and the business—of community pharmacy has evolved.
The neighbourhood pharmacy is still where Canadians go to fill prescriptions, but the business increasingly extends well beyond dispensing. And that evolution looks different from one community to the next.
It is this combination of entrepreneurship, local decision-making and an evolving role in healthcare that places independent pharmacy at the intersection of Canada’s business, retail and healthcare landscape.
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