Walgreens Push Toward Primary Care

[somarco]

Walgreens Boots Alliance and VillageMD have 52 co-located primary care practice locations currently open and will have more than 80 open by the end of this calendar year. Last year, Walgreens invested $5.2 billion in VillageMD, becoming the majority owner, and said it planned to open at least 600 Village Medical at Walgreens primary care practices across the country by 2025 and 1,000 by 2027.


https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/pr...-aggressive-strategy-healthcare-push-ceo-says

 

[goillini52]

Walgreens Boots Alliance and VillageMD have 52 co-located primary care practice locations currently open and will have more than 80 open by the end of this calendar year. Last year, Walgreens invested $5.2 billion in VillageMD, becoming the majority owner, and said it planned to open at least 600 Village Medical at Walgreens primary care practices across the country by 2025 and 1,000 by 2027.


https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/pr...-aggressive-strategy-healthcare-push-ceo-says

"As soon as we were looking at life beyond the [COVID-19] vaccination period and getting into this endemic role in our lives, it was important to think about what's the next growth venture for this company because dispensing of pharmaceuticals is not going to be our long-term growth avenue," said Rosalind "Roz" Brewer, Walgreens Boots Alliance CEO, during an onstage interview at the HLTH 2022 conference."

Like many other companies, Walgreens rode the Clot Shot BS as long as they could. Time for the next "growth venture". Sounds like they're gearing up for the next plandemic.

 

[agentjhc]

Sounds like they see the profitability of partnering with a PCP who can write scripts and send them next door to have them filled, and get a cut off the pcp business. Diversification

 

[Life Hawk]

Sounds like they see the profitability of partnering with a PCP who can write scripts and send them next door to have them filled, and get a cut off the pcp business. Diversification

Starting to sound like a horizontal monopoly. When they start selling coffins and urs, it time to get concerned.

 

[somarco]

Starting to sound like a horizontal monopoly.

I won't take this lying down . . .

 

[alphawave2k]

What may make sense is the convenience factor...Doc (PA), Urgent Care, and Rx under the same roof, other than surgery (OP), which I suppose they could add.

The in-home care could be lucrative. There's a cottage industry out there providing those services. There's a guy in a prior networking group I belonged to, that started an in-home care and has made him pretty well-off. However, it is a staffing nightmare. He has a presence in a lot of senior centers, sponsoring events and even dances with the old gals that want and need some attention. He's married, and not in the 8-80 bandwagon, so all in the name of marketing.

 

[somarco]

.Doc (PA), Urgent Care, and Rx under the same roof, other than surgery (OP), which I suppose they could add.

KP clinics have something similar . . . urgent care, not emergency . . . and some of the larger clinics have onsite lab, limited radiology and OP surgery.

Moving away from the closed panel HMO model, some of the larger urgent care facilities in Atlanta have a similar set up without the pharmacy, and only limited OP surgery more akin to minor trauma care (suturing, air cast, etc).

 

[Travis Price]

When I worked for Walgreens in 2013 as a manager, this was the direction they were going in (Boots had just showed up before I left.)

They're also making the Pharmacist more of a medical professional (within means) than just a retail pill filler.

 

[axeman462]

As a shareholder in WBA, I support this.

 

[gregj]

The big pharmacy chains have been fiddling with "retail care" variants - with & without hospital/health system partners -- for well over a decade, with LOTS of starts & stops. A lot of people love the idea. A lot of people scratch their heads about implementation.

As a systems matter, "power-loading" non-physician clinicians (eg pharmacists administering vaccinations) and "extending" via teleclinician visit options makes health care sense (so much of "health care" is basically information exchange) -- but as is so often the health care case, there's no silver bullet.