McKesson promotes 2 execs amid community pharmacy restructure
Two McKesson pharmacy executives have new roles under a recent realignment of how the company approaches its community pharmacy customers.
As it restructures its retail solutions into a community pharmacy division, Nimesh Jhaveri, previously president of Health Mart, has been named president of community pharmacy alongside being a McKesson senior vice president. Additionally, Eyad Farah has been named president of Health Mart and Health Mart Atlas.
As part of the restructure, McKesson’s community pharmacy division now includes four areas where the company supports pharmacies — from independents to small and mid-size chains.
“At McKesson we feel very strongly that one of the areas we want to focus in on is being an advisor and support for community pharmacies,” Jhaveri told Drug Store News. He noted that the company’s field sales and operations division; its partnerships with independent national accounts and buying groups; Health Mart and Health Mart Atlas, as well as its CPG and marketing capabilities; and a new team focused on emerging pharmacy channels all fall under this purview.
Farah, whose career started as a pharmacist and has been with McKesson for more than a decade in various roles, most recently led the Health Mart Atlas pharmacy services administrative organization as vice president and general manager. He said that the new structure is designed to enable the company’s clients to access McKesson’s offerings in more streamlined manner as they work to adapt to changes in the space.
“We're constantly seeing the transformation and evolution of the industry,” Farah said. “From that perspective, not only are we focusing on community pharmacy, but we want to be the right partner for community pharmacy and a big part of that is how we provide them with the right solutions with a differentiated value proposition. It made sense to bring all of our value-added solutions — all of our tools — together.”
In his new role, Farah said that his focus will be streamlining product development, identifying synergies for Health Mart Atlas, innovating the front end and looking are areas that are ripe for new thinking.
Jhaveri — who joined McKesson as president of Health Mart in 2018 after a long career at Walgreens — said that the new structure allows the company to bring its extensive capabilities — from its US Oncology and US Biologics operations to RelayHealth and CoverMyMeds — to bear on community pharmacy wherever clients may need assistance in a way that doesn’t overwhelm them.
“We're trying to make McKesson small for them — sometimes you look at McKesson and companies of similar size and you get overwhelmed as a customer,” Jhaveri said. “If we can make it manageable for them and miniaturize it for them, then they don't have to worry about these types of things, they worry about what they do best, which is taking care of their patients and businesses. We'll take care of the rest for them.”