Echo Pharmacy Offers Customized Medications

in Miller Place is not only among the dwindling number of privately owned pharmacies, but it is one of a handful of compounding pharmacies on Long Island.

“Compounding is customizing drugs to a patient’s specific needs," Owner and Pharmacist Bryan McCutcheon explained. "It’s both an art and a science.”

Standard medication dosages are based on an individual weighing 150 pounds. But what about a 100-pound woman or a 250-pound man? McCutcheon creates medication not only to an individual’s weight but blood analysis.

“For instance, hormone replacement therapy for women comes in three distinct dosages," McCutcheon said. "We can tailor a dosage to the individual based on weight, blood levels, and the medication is much more effective.”

McCutcheon cannot, by law, compound a medication at the same dose to one already on the market; it has to be at a different dosage.

Echo Pharmacy can also make a medication that would ordinarily be in pill form into a liquid or cream. McCutcheon commented that some young children, as well as those with autism, have trouble swallowing pills.

“In those cases, we make transdermal creams," he said. “We can find new ways to help people. A lot of meds, at lower dosages, are found to be beneficial for conditions which they originally were not intended for.”

The pharmacy also compounds pet prescriptions. It is difficult to give cats pills; the pharmacy makes a cream that is put on the ears where there are a lot of blood vessels and the medication is absorbed easily.

Echo Pharmacy opened in 2002. McCutcheon had had a good deal of experience as a pharmacist, but he had never compounded medication until he established himself in Miller Place.

“I started a little at a time,” he said. “It just developed into a great way to give people customized medication, which can only be more effective for them.”

He is enthusiastic about a new bill that just passed the New York Legislature that should turn around a situation that had been affecting his business.

Insurers were directing their members to mail order firms, or making arrangements with pharmacy chains. If their members went out of this network, they would be penalized.

But the very recent passing of AMMO (Anti-Mandatory-Mail-Order), which now only awaits the governor’s signature, would change all that.

“I can’t see him not signing it,” McCutcheon said, “because what the insurers were doing was sending $5 billion a year outside of New York State.”

The pharmacist mentioned other negatives about mail order meds.

“Usually you have to order a 90-day supply, but often a doctor changes your prescription after a month or two," he said. "You’ve bought more than you needed and when you get meds delivered to your mail box on hot summer days—they’re in there for hours, in the heat; it affects the medication’s potency.”