Over 45 Million Americans Lack Convenient Access to a Pharmacy

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Pharmacies and pharmacists play a critical role in our healthcare system. They dispense prescription and over-the-counter medications, provide immunizations, and counsel patients on medication side effects, interactions, and regimens.

These essential services ensure patient safety and help patients take their medications as prescribed. That ultimately improves the overall health of the community.

In an ideal world, everyone would have equal access to necessary health services like pharmacies. But this isn't the case. And with many pharmacies closing, the problem is only getting worse.

The GoodRx Research team set out to identify "pharmacy deserts," or areas across the U.S. where people lack adequate access to retail pharmacies. Below, we document the state of pharmacy access in 2024 and track how pharmacy deserts have changed over time.

Over 46% of U.S. counties are pharmacy deserts

In 2021, GoodRx Research found that over 41 million Americans lived in pharmacy deserts. These people had to drive more than 15 minutes to their closest pharmacies.

We identified pharmacy deserts by comparing the average driving distance to nearby pharmacies to the average time it takes to drive 10 miles in a rural area (about 15 minutes). We based our formula on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) definition of food deserts.

Today, over 45 million people live in a pharmacy desert - an increase of over 9% since 2021. This means that the number of people living in pharmacy deserts in the U.S. is growing faster than the U.S. population overall. Over 46% of U.S. counties are now pharmacy deserts.

The below map shows areas where residents have to drive more than 15 minutes to local pharmacies - a distance that could make it difficult to fill a prescription if needed. The farther a person lives from a pharmacy, the less access they have to in-stock medications and different pharmacies for price-shopping (since prices for the same medication often vary across pharmacies).

States like Vermont (48%), Maine (45%), and Montana (42%) have the largest share of their populations living in a pharmacy desert.

Other states with a large share of their populations living in a pharmacy desert include South Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska, Mississippi, North Dakota, and Iowa. Residents in these states may have access to healthcare professionals who can prescribe them medications. But filling that prescription may be more difficult.

In some areas, residents have to drive over an hour to fill their prescriptions. For example, the more than 100,000 residents in Arizona's Navajo County must drive over 77 minutes, on average, to reach the closest retail pharmacies. In neighboring Apache County, over 66,000 residents have to drive an hour and a half to reach the closest retail pharmacies.

Patients may need to drive even farther if their medication is out of stock at the nearest pharmacies due to a shortage.

Almost 15% of pharmacies have closed since 2021, creating more pharmacy deserts

Retail pharmacies have been steadily closing across the country. In 2024, we estimate that there are just over 55,000 retail pharmacies left in the U.S. - a nearly 15% decrease in the total number of pharmacies in the country since 2021.

These pharmacy closures have impacted regions differently, as shown in the map below. In general, California, New York, Texas, Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan, and Illinois had the largest number of retail pharmacy closures. They each lost at least 350 pharmacies between 2021 and 2024.

In percentage terms, Kansas (-32%), Wyoming (-27%), Idaho (-25%), and Nebraska (-18%) saw the most pharmacy closures. Many counties in these states were already pharmacy deserts. So these closures worsened access to pharmacists and prescription medications.

The map below shows how the pharmacy supply has changed since 2021.

As pharmacies close, patients may be left scrambling to figure out where to fill their prescriptions. They may have to drive farther than before to reach the closest open pharmacy and face longer wait times at those pharmacies. This can be even harder if they don't have a car and rely on walking or public transportation.

Fewer open pharmacies translates to more people living in pharmacy deserts. As the map below shows, 196 counties have become a pharmacy desert since 2021. Due to pharmacy closures, residents in these counties must drive farther to reach the pharmacy.

In some counties that lost their pharmacy desert status, the opening of new pharmacies has made it easier to get to the pharmacy. However, we estimate that over 4.6 million more people are living in pharmacy deserts today than in 2021.

Texas, Virginia, and Michigan saw the biggest increase in pharmacy deserts. Since 2021:

• 16 more counties in Texas became pharmacy deserts.

• 11 more counties in Virginia became pharmacy deserts.

• 11 more counties in Michigan became pharmacy deserts.

These people face more obstacles to accessing their prescription medications than before. And, with more pharmacy closures planned, that access will continue to dwindle.

Methodology

We gathered data on over 66,000 community retail pharmacies from 2021 through 2024 from DataQ and GoodRx. We sourced demographic data on population from the 2022 American Community Survey 5-Year Data. And we took the centers of population for each census tract from the Census 2020 Centers of Population by Census Tract. We excluded U.S. territories from this analysis.

We calculated driving time to the nearest pharmacy, hospital, trauma center, and community health center based on the straight-line distance from each tract population centroid. We applied a census detour index of 1.417 to each driving distance. Driving time was estimated using average driving speed in urban, suburban, and rural areas. We used the 2023 USDA Rural-Urban Continuum Codes to define urban areas using the codes 1, 2, or 3; suburban areas using the codes 4, 5, 6, 7; and rural areas using codes 8, 9, and 10. We used the 2010 USDA Rural-Urban Continuum Codes to impute areas with missing data.

We considered a census tract a pharmacy desert if the average driving time to the three closest pharmacies exceeded 15 minutes. We used the average distance to the three closest pharmacies to account for pharmacies' inventory, preferred insurance networks, and patients' ability to price-shop.

The 15-minute threshold was based on the USDA's definition of "food deserts." According to that definition, a food desert is a tract where at least 500 people and/or 33% of a tract population lives more than 1 mile from a supermarket or large grocery in urban areas and more than 10 miles in rural areas. We derived 15 minutes by applying the average driving speed in rural areas to 10 miles.

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