For more than thirty years, Raphael Health Center has provided quality care to the residents of Indianapolis’s Near North Side neighborhood. Raphael was founded by the Tabernacle Presbyterian Church, after church leaders challenged their congregation to respond to the needs of the surrounding neighborhood. What began as a free Saturday clinic staffed by volunteer members of the church, has grown into a Federally Qualified Health Center serving thousands of patients every year.
Raphael continues to live out its founding mission with the launch of its in-house pharmacy, in partnership with Alchemy. The new pharmacy directly addresses an urgent community need. Repeated pharmacy closures have left residents in what is now a pharmacy desert, where reaching the nearest chain pharmacy can require multiple bus rides and hours of waiting.
“Our patients are managing diabetes, hypertension, and other chronic illnesses. Without access to medication, those conditions spiral,” explained Sherry Gray, CEO of Raphael Health Center. “By opening a pharmacy here, we are directly responding to the needs of our community. This is about access, equity, and trust.”
Since opening in October 2024, Raphael’s pharmacy has filled more than 8,000 prescriptions, a testament to both the demand and the deep trust patients place in their care team.
Raphael is a true primary care home, offering primary care, dental, OBGYN, behavioral health and optometry services. And the waiting room reflects the diversity of the Near North Side, which is home to large Burmese and Hispanic populations, along with many other immigrant and minority groups. To meet community needs, Raphael provides services in multiple languages, and Alchemy has adapted our pharmacy software so patients can access it in English, Spanish, and Khmer.
As retail pharmacies close around them, Raphael’s in-house pharmacy is sustainable only because of the 340B drug pricing program. This is exactly what the program was intended to do: enable safety net providers to provide reliable access to essential medications and reinvest savings back into patient care. At Raphael, those proceeds have made it possible to support uninsured patients through programs like Direct Relief, resources that were out of reach under contract pharmacy models due to the fees associated. They have also fueled service expansion, including a new mobile clinic and a same-day PrEP program for HIV prevention.
“This isn’t just about filling prescriptions,” said Gray. “It is about strengthening the fabric of care in a community where barriers to health have existed for generations.”
We knew our community needed this, but we couldn’t have done it ourselves. There are so many steps: licensing, inspections, contracting, and Alchemy helped us navigate every one of them. They made the process possible and sustainable.
Sherry Gray
CEO, Raphael Health Center
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