He’s spent over 25 years behind pharmacy counters — now he’s opening a new pharmacy to help you.
Qual-i-tee Pharmacy is a new community pharmacy in Madison focused on putting patients first. It is owned by a husband-and-wife team, with Ryan Bender as the managing pharmacist and Kindra Goehler as the business manager. Together, they are working to bring the best pharmacy care to their adopted hometown.
Ryan was sixteen when he took a part-time job at a downtown drugstore in Appleton, Wisconsin. The staff pharmacists—UW–Madison grads spanning the ’50s through the ’70s—took him under their wing, taught him the trade, and pushed him toward pharmacy school.
I saw these pharmacists help people all day long. They answered questions, taught people about their medications, and I thought, ‘’That’s what I want to do. I want to help people.’
Ryan Bender, PharmD
Managing Pharmacist, Qual-i-tee Pharmacy
Nearly thirty years later, he’s bringing that same kind of pharmacy to Madison. “Chain pharmacies are understaffed. Clinics say they’re not taking new patients. Everywhere you call, there’s a phone tree that basically tells you to go away. People aren’t getting the help they need. I want to change that. I want to bring back what pharmacy used to be—what healthcare used to be. It should be about helping people.”
Why Independent Pharmacy?
When he was a student at the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Pharmacy, his first internship was at the Walgreens on University Avenue, where he saw firsthand where big-box pharmacy priorities lie. “They used to put the stock price on a whiteboard above the time clock,” Ryan remembers. “And that was at the same time they stopped giving out free oral syringes for liquid antibiotics. If parents wanted to be sure their kids got the right dose, they would have to buy one for two dollars.”
His big-box experience taught him that the best patient care always puts the patient first, and that the best place to do that is at independent community pharmacies.
Every Job in the Building, in Every Corner of the County
After graduating from UW with a Doctor of Pharmacy in 2005, he took a job at Hometown Pharmacy, first as a float pharmacist, then as a pharmacy manager, and finally as its director of clinical services. That career took him behind the counter in small towns all over Dane County and its neighbors—Belleville, McFarland, Cottage Grove, Deerfield, Dodgeville, Cambridge, Rio, Columbus, Poynette. Places where the pharmacist is part of the community. Places where people can still walk in or call up and get advice. Places where the pharmacists ask questions, not just say “Any questions?”
Ask Him about Vaccines. Seriously.
If Ryan has a professional calling card, it’s immunizations. He has spent years building vaccine programs from the ground up—writing the safety protocols, training pharmacists and technicians, maintaining CDC-compliant storage and handling, and running vaccination clinics both in the pharmacy and out in the community, including travel vaccines as specialized as yellow fever.
After Matt Mabie, one of the founders of Hometown Pharmacy, left to start his own pharmacy, Forward Pharmacy, Ryan went with him. “Matt wanted a pharmacy that put the patients first, above everything else. He wanted to be able to implement his ideas to improve patient care.” Together, they worked to expand immunization access in the area, including being among the first to offer COVID vaccines. “COVID really brought pharmacies to the forefront as a place for people to get vaccinations. We worked hard to make them as accessible as possible because we wanted to keep our patients and our communities safe.”
More Than Filling Prescription Vials
Ryan’s clinical work goes well past the prescription counter. At Forward Pharmacy, he led medication therapy management programs where pharmacists sit down with patients and untangle their whole medication list. He built medication synchronization programs so patients make one pickup a month instead of five. And he has established collaborative practice agreements—arrangements with physicians that let pharmacists do more for patients directly—covering things like nicotine replacement therapy, home blood pressure monitors, and inhaler spacers for asthma care.
Every one of those programs exists because of the same question: what’s actually getting in this patient’s way, and how do we fix it? That question is the entire blueprint for Qual-i-tee.
Training the Pharmacists Who Come Next
Ryan doesn’t just practice pharmacy—he teaches it. He has been a preceptor for the UW–Madison School of Pharmacy since 2008, and for the Medical College of Wisconsin and Concordia University pharmacy schools as well, mentoring student pharmacists and residents through their training. He serves on UW–Madison’s residency advisory and curriculum committees, helping shape how the next generation of pharmacists learns the profession.
He also volunteered as a mentor pharmacist at the UW–Madison student-run MEDiC Clinic, which serves patients who might otherwise go without care, work that earned him MEDiC Pharmacist of the Year in 2019.
Why He’s Opening Up a New Pharmacy
Ryan and Kindra have lived in Madison for twenty-five years. Their kids were born here and go to school here. This is home, which is why watching pharmacy services in his community grow slower, more opaque, and less personal year after year finally became unbearable.
You can get the full story in “Why I’m Opening a Direct Pay Pharmacy,” but here’s the short version: he believes Madison deserves a pharmacy where someone knows your name, your prescriptions are ready in minutes, and you see the price before you pay. So he’s building one.
Come Say Hello!
Qual-i-tee Pharmacy opens this September at 3304 University Avenue in Shorewood Hills. Every price is posted—no surprises at the counter. And switching takes one phone call. You call us. We handle the rest, including breaking up with your old pharmacy.
