24: Dipak Patel
Pharmacist
Dipak Patel is a pharmacist and owner at the Medicine Shoppe, and he has been spearheading an incredibly successful vaccination effort in the area. Naturally, he was working all throughout the pandemic, clocking about 50 hours a week on average, but he went into overdrive when vaccines became readily available, putting in 70 hours of work every week to set up public vaccination clinics on top of his normal work. During that time, he did not have a spare minute to devote to his family. He lives with his wife, two young children, and both of his parents. His wife, a nurse, and father both worked throughout the shutdown. His mother is retired and was able to look after the children instead of sending them to daycare.
The pandemic really took a toll on the small pharmacy. It was incredibly challenging to keep up with the workflow and to motivate the team. But everyone on Dipak’s staff stepped up to the occasion and played their part perfectly. When Medicine Shoppe first opened up their website to schedule vaccines, 800 people signed up within the first hour, crashing the website. That was an eye-opening moment for Dipak. Seeing that immense demand for vaccines really motivated him to do everything in his power to vaccinate the community. At one point, the store even stood to lose about 50,000 to 100,000 dollars on the vaccines, since the insurance companies were not paying them out very well at the beginning of the rollout. But they were more than willing to make that sacrifice for the health and wellbeing of the community. Fortunately, though, the rates were eventually increased, and the pharmacy is doing well financially. It was never a question of money though. The way Dipak saw it, only the really lucky ones ever get such a chance to help so many people.
Initially, the goal was to vaccinate at least 5,000 people. At the time of the interview, Dipak’s clinics had administered more than 20,000 vaccines. Initially, they were just planning on administering about 1,000 vaccines to their customers. However, their initial attempt to administer vaccines in their small store proved slow and difficult, as the volume of people was simply too large for their space. So they started to reach out to other places in the community, like nursing homes, churches, and schools to try to bring the vaccines to the people that needed them. The first public clinic, hosted at a church, also ended up running a bit rough, but before the day was out, the team had ironed out the process to where they could easily vaccinate 100 people every hour. That was at the first clinic, at the time of the interview Dipak estimated that the team at the most recent clinic was averaging 600 people an hour.
He is incredibly grateful for his team of more than 500 volunteers at the clinics. They have received more than 100 thank you cards from grateful patients. In fact, people getting vaccines were so grateful that they were trying to give money to the volunteers. So, they decided to put out a donation box at the clinics. Thus far they’ve donated 1,500 dollars to various food banks. Dipak is glad that he was able to do this for his community, no matter how much time and effort it took. His family had always instilled in him a sense of civic duty and responsibility. But he is happy that he’ll be able to take his wife on a much-needed, well-deserved vacation soon.
