Walgreens expands primary care footprint with VillageMD-Summit Health deal

The $9 billion acquisition of Summit Health by Walgreens-owned primary care company VillageMD heats up competition among national retailers in the care delivery race.

Context: In 2022 alone, Amazon, CVS, and now Walgreens have made major investments in health care delivery models.

• Amazon announced its planned $3.9 billion acquisition of One Medical this summer, beating out CVS.
• CVS moved fast to land an $8 billion deal for Signify Health. CVS was also eyeing Cano Health, which operates primary-care centers, although those talks have reportedly been tabled.

Zoom in: With this deal, VillageMD is placing its bet on the importance of specialty care, Axios' Sarah Pringle writes.

• With the Summit Health acquisition, VillageMD will expand its footprint in the Northeast and in Oregon. The two groups will have 680 provider locations in 26 markets.

Zoom out: For Walgreens Boots Alliance, which posted its fourth-quarter results last month, VillageMD was the largest driver of the company's sales growth in the past year in the United States, executives told investors.

• “If you want to continue to be successful in delivering care in a value-based care model, you have to be successful managing the specialty spend and the other ancillary spend, like lab and imaging," VillageMD CEO Tim Barry told Axios' Sarah Pringle and Claire Rychlewski.