The company formed a new health segment and announced that it will partner with VillageMD to open primary care clinics. CVS and Walmart are major competitors, and it will take time to determine if their new strategy pays off.
- A new plan: Walgreens recently launched a plan to integrate multiple medical services with the goal of helping patients like CEO Brewer’s mother. Last month, it revised its strategy and planned to establish several primary care clinics under its new business unit.
- Investments: It has made some investments to advance this strategy-it Purchased a majority stake recently At the primary care company Doctor of Rural Medicine And home care company Nursing Center -And plan to make more in the future.
- Health corners: The company plans to open 1,000 primary care clinics in VillageMD by 2027 and is co-located with its stores, and is renovating the “health corner” of some of its stores, where patients can talk to health consultants and obtain information about over-the-counter drugs. They have been added to its 40 stores and hope to reach 3,000 stores.
- Interactions: The key to Walgreens’ primary care strategy is the partnership with VillageMD. The idea is to integrate the clinic with the Walgreens pharmacy so that the patient’s doctors and pharmacists can know if their prescriptions have adverse side effects or high deductibles.
- Model plan: “Starting with a few clinics, we have proven that this model is indeed effective,” VillageMD CEO Tim Barry said in an interview with Zoom, adding that these clinics received high net referral scores in the 1980s.So far, Walgreens has A total committed investment is US$5.2 billion At VillageMD, it plans to open 80 clinics in its stores by the end of this year and more than 1,000 clinics by 2027.
