Pharmacy chains eye serving corporations
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Megan Robinson/Axios
As retail pharmacy giants like CVS Health and Walgreens look to find their footing, they could find opportunities customizing services to large employers instead of the mass consumer market.
Why it matters: The industry is shrinking its footprint and pulling back from full-service care delivery. Experts say the biggest players could refashion themselves to become de facto in-house clinics to giant corporations.
"We had a couple of years where costs were sort of not the first thing on everybody's minds," said Tyler Giesting of consulting firm West Monroe.
- Now? "Health care costs and drug costs have come back to the forefront of the conversation."
Private equity is increasingly looking for ways to help business curb its health spending, and a growing number of smaller companies have found a niche in employer health clinics.
- Big pharmacy companies could find an opening, since they're already managing troves of medical data and boast valuable drug pipelines.
- As pharmacies pull back on care delivery models, that could make an ideal pivot, Giesting said.
- "They're vertically integrated, highly diversified organizations. They have an opportunity to play a very large role," he said.
Between the lines: CVS Health could be a case study. It has shuttered locations, opened smaller format stores and remains in the midst of a cost-cutting turnaround strategy. But it is still looking for a way to bridge the pharmacy counter and traditional primary care, said Peter Bonis, chief medical officer at Wolters Kluwer Health.
- That could mean offering health screenings like blood pressure, lipid measurements and point-of-care testing for flu, strep throat and COVID followed by treatment, Bonis said.
- In the case of Walmart, it launched a program in autoimmune diseases as a way to leverage capabilities around one discrete service line with specialty drugs associated with it, he said.
- "All of them are sort of wrestling with the role of advanced practice providers and pharmacists as clinical providers, and finding out what that pathway might look like," Bonis said.
