Aurora to close 11 pharmacies

Aurora Health Care plans to close 11 pharmacies systemwide effective tomorrow afternoon, Lake Country Publications learned Wednesday afternoon.

According to an Aurora spokesman, 82 Aurora employees will be affected.

Locally, the Aurora pharmacies in the Village of Sussex and the City of Waukesha are slated to close, but nine others in a system that includes 80 pharmacies and stretches from Green Bay to the Illinois border will close as well.

Of the affected employees, spokesman Adam Beeson said, "Our hope is to redeploy all of them within our system. We have identified and offered about half of them new positions, and the other half we're hoping we can identify positions for them and offer them to them. That's our goal."

He said the company anticipates finding positions for most, if not all, affected employees. He also stated that the majority would stay on with Aurora until April 20, but some could lose their positions as early as April 2.

Beeson termed the 11 closing pharmacies as the "lowest volume pharmacies" in Aurora's system, but he indicated that Walgreen's had agreed to purchase each of the businesses.

"So anyone who, for instance, maybe had a prescription that would be refilled with Aurora, they would then be able to then go and refill that prescription with Walgreen's," he said.