(Radio Iowa) – A nonprofit pharmacy with urgent care is set to open in Cedar Rapids, the first in the area to serve primarily low-income families. Stacie Eastman, development director for Eastern Iowa Health Care, says the pharmacy may better serve those patients under a bill Governor Kim Reynolds’ signed into law Wednesday. It would allow patients to pick up covered medications from a pharmacy of their choosing, rather than being limited to certain pharmacies by pharmacy benefit managers, or P-B-Ms.

“This really allows people as well to be a little bit healthier, too,” Eastman says, “because we have the opportunity then for people to be able to get what it is that they need in a quicker manner, rather than having your company decide, ‘Yeah, you can have that medicine but now you have to wait for it to be mail-ordered.'” Nearly 70 percent of Eastern Iowa Health Care’s existing patients have earnings below the federal poverty line, and 61 percent are on Medicaid. Eastman says the new pharmacy will help to fill the gap left by another one in the area shutting down. “We know that there’s a huge group of people already who are really looking forward to using our services so that we can start to work on them getting healthy again,” she says, “and our pharmacy not only is going to be open to everybody in just our neighborhood, but it’s open to our whole community as well.”

The health care provider has not operated a pharmacy until now.