Local pharma distributor files for Ch. 11

After just three years in operation, company that was hoping to improve various aspects of drug distribution goes bankrupt

Email | Print By Walker Duncan

After about three years in operation, venture-backed institutional pharmacy New Day has filed for Chapter 11 protection.

In addition, the company has filed a motion for an expedited hearing before or on Wednesday with Judge Paine. According to the motion, the expedited hearing is needed to preserve the company’s going concern value before its payroll comes due on Thursday.

Among the other requests in the filing were “Bidding Procedures for Sale of Debtor’s Assets and Approving Break-Up Fee and Expense Reimbursement for Proposed Purchaser.”

The Chapter 11 petition itself lists no exact asset or liability figures, estimating both broadly between $1 and $10 million. The list of the company’s 20 largest unsecured creditors, available here, shows owed amounts ranging from $523,000 owed to pharmaceutical giant AmerisourceBergen, and $91,000 to local law firm Harwell Howard Hyne Gabbert & Manner, down to various debts between $5,000 and $7,000. The largest secured creditor is noted in the hearing request as being SunTrust Bank.

The company, which started in 2006, partners with long-term care facilities to provide, among other things, on-site drug dispensing units, which, according to the company’s Web site, “allow nurses to fill new or emergency medications within minutes after receiving a physician’s order.”

Additionally, New Day has attempted to take some of the paper out of the pharmacy process by marketing a paperless communication process for the transmission of physician medication orders.

Late last year, the company, which had previously worked with facilities in Ohio and Indiana, had landed its first Tennessee customer.

Filing the petition on behalf of New Day are Austin McMullen and Bill Norton of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings.