West Concord Pharmacy Your Independent Neighborhood Pharmacy

For more than a quarter of a century, the Dinno Family has been a trusted provider of pharmacy services, prescription medications, quality supplements, and health, wellness, and beauty products.   Our family operates three independent pharmacies in metropolitan Boston:  Acton Pharmacy, Keyes Drug in Newton, and West Concord Pharmacy.

We highly value our customers, and have forged strong bonds with physicians and their patients.   Our pharmacists, and all of our employees, know our customers; we strive to deliver to them service that is personalized, caring, and professional.

The Dinno Family and those who work in our pharmacies are saddened and alarmed by the ongoing spread of meningitis in several states that has resulted in 12 deaths and many cases of serious illness.  A custom compounded steroid that became tainted with a fungus, which was made at a compounding pharmacy in Framingham called New England Compounding Center, is suspected as the source of the meningitis.  It is estimated that as many as 13,000 people received the compounded steroid injection as a pain treatment.  Our pharmacies have no relationship with with New England Compounding Center (NECC).  In fact, NECC is very different than the compounding pharmacies operated by our family.  We only fill prescriptions from physicians — we do not compound mass produced medications as is alleged to have occurred at that center.  We also only compound non-sterile products, while the steroid in question was a sterile product.

It is a priority now for our public health agencies to identify all of the people who received the steroid injection and to make sure that they have the appropriate medical care.

In that the trust and confidence our customers hold in us and our pharmacies is paramount, we are compelled to address here the meningitis outbreak and how it relates to compounding pharmacy.  This is especially important in that incomplete information and misinformation on pharmacy compounding has been spurred by the outbreak.

Our Acton and Newton pharmacies offer drug compounding.  Compounding, or creating custom medication, is the foundation of pharmacy and goes back to ancient times.  Drug compounding serves a necessary and immensely valuable purpose in many ways, including the following:

• Creating medication that works best for the individual.
• Making available needed medications that are in short supply, or have been discontinued.
• Making more palatable – through the introduction of various flavors – medicines that in their commercial form have a disagreeable taste.
• Taking a medicine only available in a pill or tablet form (which some people have trouble swallowing) and converting it into a liquid, topical, or lozenge form.
• Making medications without the ingredients to which some patients are allergic, or in strengths that are not commercially available.

A physician must prescribe a compounded medication.  All compounding pharmacies – just as is the case with all pharmacies – are required to operate under the governmental oversight of a state board of pharmacy, the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

Nobody yet knows exactly what happened at NECC (which has ceased operations), and nor should we speculate until state and federal investigations are complete.

Our compounding facilities that serve our pharmacies meet the highest standards.  Our pharmacists rank with the most skilled and technically capable in the practice of pharmacy compounding as you will find anywhere.

In the wake of this terribly tragic event, the focus should be on what went wrong in the facility that made the steroid which has caused such tremendous loss and suffering.  When identified, the conditions and specifics of this lapse and breach need to be publicized.

This will all serve the interest of public safety – and also in supporting pharmacy compounding and the many people who benefit from the medications it produces.