Ed Ullmann has had a great many memorable experiences in his career as a Catskills pharmacist, but the man with the nasty cat bite was one of the scarier ones. “This gentleman hated the medical system; I don’t think I’ve ever filled a prescription for him,” he says. “He came in and said, ‘Somebody told me I should come and see you. I’ve got this cat bite.’” Cat bites are notoriously prone to infection, and Ullmann urged the 72-year-old to go to the emergency room or to urgent care. “He absolutely refused, so I was faced with a moment of truth,” he says. “Either this guy was going to go home and do nothing, or I needed to intervene.” Ullmann ascertained that the bite was infected, but that the infection had not yet spread, and advised the man to clean the wound, apply antiseptic, soak his hand in Epsom salts, and then apply a drawing ointment. He also recommended colloidal silver to fight the infection and elderberry elixir to boost immunity, and was able to contact the man’s primary care provider and get him a prescription for an antibiotic, which he took alongside the elderberry and topical silver. In a little less than three weeks, there were signs of healing; in seven weeks, the man’s hand was fully healed.
“When you study other cultures and you’re coming from the American mindset that we have superior health care—which, by the way, costs us twice as much as it does anywhere else—you can be blinded by that preconception.” – Owner Ed Ullmann
“There’s a gray area in pharmacy when we have people come in with emergent issues, and it’s only going to get more common as the health care system lets people down,” Ullmann says. “The people I see out here in the Catskills aren’t uneducated folks; they’ve just had bad experiences with the healthcare system. I had a man who had both diabetes and COPD; he had constant upper-respiratory issues and he’d end up going to the hospital, where they’d have to decide whether to address his sugar first or give him antibiotics, which raise sugar levels. He had some awful experiences and said, ‘That’s it; I’m done. I’m not going to the hospital anymore.’ But we were able to treat him with colloidal silver, which was commonly used as an antibiotic before the development of penicillin. He called me in three days and told me the pneumonia was gone; I told him to keep taking the silver for five more days, and that was another success story. That’s the magic of pharmacy; I’ve had some really good experiences. Meanwhile, people coming in asking for advice is up by probably 100 percent, as access to primary care tightens up and people wait three or four months to get an appointment, or have a bad experience with an urgent care facility.”
In a lifetime of science, Ullmann has seen corporate healthcare from the inside out—he spent sixteen years as an HMO founder and CEO with Wellcare, and was a National HMO Fellow at Georgetown Medical School in Washington, DC. He’s developed 30 startups and was named 1994 Health Care Entrepreneur of the Year in Southern New England by Inc. Magazine. He’s also been a pharmacy district manager, served as Ulster County’s Mental Health Director and as a county legislator, and owned and operated the world-renowned Warm Mineral Springs in Florida.
Over the past couple of decades, Ullmann’s study of natural and herbal remedies has convinced him that despite the triumphs of modern medicine, there’s a very important place for simpler, older remedies.
The launch was challenging, to say the least; he became a widower and the proprietor of the first not-for-profit community pharmacy in the United States at just about the same time.
“I’ve traveled to a lot of parts of the world, sometimes with my late wife and sometimes alone,” he says, “and what I came away with was, I learned I really didn’t know anything. When you study other cultures and you’re coming from the American mindset that we have superior health care—which, by the way, costs us twice as much as it does anywhere else—you can be blinded by that preconception. You go through years of schooling, you go out and work in the real world, and then you experience other cultures, and you’re shocked. You realize that most of them look at natural therapies first, and at pharmaceutical drugs only after that. We’re at the other extreme. We don’t even regulate natural products, in contrast to a place like Germany, where natural products have to be certified, outcome data is required, and nobody is allowed to own more than six pharmacies. No chain pharmacies over there.
“Traveling, I discovered that people around the world do things differently than the United States, and we can learn from them, and they can learn from us. But we don’t have a medical system that thinks that way and looks to the world for best practices. We have a system that thinks we’re superior.”
Ullmann opened his first Wellness Rx in Tannersville in 2015, on the invitation of members of the nonprofit Hunter Foundation who wanted the town to have its own pharmacy, and relocated to Phoenicia, his home town, to open his current location in 2023. The launch was challenging, to say the least; he became a widower and the proprietor of Pharmacy For The Public Good DBA Wellness Rx, the first not-for-profit community pharmacy in the United States, at just about the same time. The store integrates traditional pharmacy services and wellness checks with house-made products, natural healing, immunizations, consultations, custom blending, and much more.
The store is beautiful, which Ullmann considers an important ingredient in the compound prescription that is Wellness Rx.
The job calls upon all the skills in his tool kit, from the things he learned in his corporate era—he spent some time as Pharmacy District Manager of 37 Hudson Valley Rite Aid stores at one point, to see what he could learn—to the natural wisdom he absorbed in other countries and the teaching skills he’s honed as an Adjunct Experiential Faculty Member at the Albany College of Pharmacy, where he serves on the President’s Advisory Council. On the front lines of rural health care, he never knows what might be coming next: a paranoid schizophrenic who’s incapable of leaving his home to get the prescriptions he needs (the man has been gently coaxed into coming out to pick them up), a rash that’s probably shingles (Burow’s solution and a custom homeopathic salve led to excellent results), or a browsing shopper whose blood pressure turns out to be 200/100 (calmly advised to head to the doctor).
The store is beautiful, which Ullmann considers an important ingredient in the compound prescription that is Wellness Rx. “I’ve never met a pharmacist who wouldn’t prefer to work in the kind of environment we’ve created here,” he says.
“We have an art gallery—I’m an artist myself—and aquariums. Congressman [Antonio] Delgado visited my Tannersville store right before he became lieutenant governor, and the first thing he said was that it smelled absolutely wonderful. State Senator Michelle Hinchey’s been a huge supporter; she was the keynote speaker at our groundbreaking ceremony. I realize there are never guarantees in life, but I truly believe we’ll find a large family trust, maybe through the Gates Foundation or something within the healthcare system, and that will give us what we need to build out a corporate team and replicate this model. It’s desperately needed. And if you can’t build something like this in Ulster County, I don’t know where you can.”
Ullmann keeps his eyes on the prize. The entire endeavor is dedicated to his wife; the memory of her love informs every move. His staff are people surviving health challenges of their own. And he never tires of the people and the in-kind exchanges.
“I have joyful moments every day,” he says. “Just today, my aquarium person—he’s a nurse, and his hobbies are cooking and aquariums, and I’d killed my fish because I know nothing about aquariums. So he said, ‘You be the pharmacist; I’ll take care of the fish,’ so he keeps the fish healthy, and it’s beautiful now, and he brought me a beautiful tomato-cucumber salad today. Another person does my gardens in exchange for what they need. Last Thursday I had a woman knocking at the door before I was even open—that’s a sign of panic or something like it—and I bring her in.
“I’ve never met a pharmacist who wouldn’t prefer to work in the kind of environment we’ve created here. We have an art gallery, aquariums, and a space that feels good to walk into.” – Owner Ed Ullmann
She’s shaking. She tells me her son has a staph infection and she lost the measuring cup and can’t give him his medication. I go, ‘Well, we got that covered; I can fix that for you no problem,’ and I look at the eleven-year-old and he’s been feeding off her panic, right? Of course. So I think, what’s needed to come out of this? Let’s get this kid feeling joyful, that’ll help mom too.
“‘This is your lucky time!’ I told him. ‘I haven’t fed my fish yet. Look at them jumping, waiting for their food.’ And they were, they were jumping all over the place. So he’s watching me feed them, and they calm down, and I say ‘OK, now you can say hi to the fish. They’re calmer. I get him his honey stick—every kid gets a honey stick—and here you have it: a kid who’s now having a wonderful morning. Then I got Mom the measuring cup. ‘No charge,’ I told her. ‘This one’s on us.’”
wellness rx
53 Main Street, Phoenicia
845-688-0188
wellnessrxllc.com
